New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has announced the completion of its rollout of Apple Pay’s Express Transit support to all of its bus and subway fleet and in all stations in the city.
The integration works through the MTAs OMNY (‘One Metro New York’) contactless fare payment system, which looks to fully replace the system’s MetroCards after 2023. Both methods of payment will be accepted until then.
Express Transit — which debuted in iOS 12.3 in May of 2019 and was ready for use with the MTA shortly after its launch — allows transit riders to use their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay for their transit rides without the need to authenticate. This works by having users select a default card in their Apple Pay app for their transit rides which is separate from their default card for all other payments.
The integration of Apple Pay continues a trend of the Silicon Valley tech giant seeing its proprietary digital wallet payment solution gain adoption with some of the world largest transit systems. Last year, Transport for London (TfL) announced its integration of the Express Transit solution, while it is also available in Portland, Shanghai, Beijing, and various transit networks in Japan.
At this time, an OMNY spokesperson noted that though Apple Pay Express Transit support is now available network-wide, it still only works for paying for one ride at a time, with support for the purchase of unlimited ride passes expected to come at a later date.
Source: MacRumors
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