BART Riders Embrace Paying with Mobile Phones – NFC Trial a Success

Earlier this year a select group of San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) riders took part in a first-in-the-nation trial to pay for their fares and food, receive discounts and check account balances using just their new mobile phone containing a contactless chip that enables transactions without a traditional plastic card. BART, First Data and ViVOtech has published the results of the trial conducted in the San Francisco area from Jan. 28 to May 30, 2008, which demonstrate high use when both transit fare and retail payments are combined in the same phone.

The results show that BART riders who took part in the trial extensively used their contactless, Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled phones to pay for their BART fares and meals at participating Jack in the Box restaurants. The results also show that participants at BART stations frequently tapped smart advertisements in BART stations with their NFC phones. These posters contained directions to nearby Jack in the Box restaurants.

The data shows that trial participants took close to 9,000 trips on BART during the trial. To pay at BART stations, they simply tapped their NFC-equipped mobile phones, provided by Sprint, on top of the BART fare gates. This represents an average of 50 trips per participant during the four-month trial. Participants also topped-up their BART card balances more than 800 times using the over-the-air (OTA) feature of their NFC-equipped phones averaging five BART top-ups per mobile phone during the trial. More than 80% of trial participants indicated that the mobile wallet application was easy to use.

"We're very excited that our trial was so successful," BART's longest serving board member, James Fang, said. "NFC devices are all the rage in Asia, and if all goes well, millions of Americans will have access to these NFC-enabled phones starting in two years. With so many people turning to transit to avoid the ever-skyrocketing price of gas, we must do everything we can to break down the barriers that stand in the way of them using BART. The NFC-enabled phone simplifies their lives because they never need to dig for a BART ticket again, and they can bypass those fumbling for change at the ticket machine, and instead, go directly through the faregates - knowing they always have the correct fare on their phones."

Another value of this trial was to test the combination of transit and Jack in the Box meal purchases using the mobile phones as well as to drive traffic to merchants using NFC-enabled smart posters. During the trial, participants tapped their phones several hundred times on smart posters located throughout the BART terminal to obtain directions to the nearest Jack in the Box restaurant from the BART station.

"The success of this trial truly demonstrates the future of mobile commerce - the ability to see account balances, make payments and participate in marketing programs from an NFC enabled phone," said Barry McCarthy, president, First Data Mobile Commerce Solutions. "For the first time, multiple payment accounts co-existed on the same mobile phone. Mobility will play a big role in the future of commerce, and First Data is working to leverage its market and thought leadership to drive mobile commerce adoption broadly."

"The BART trial results show that transit payment is a killer application for NFC mobile phones providing convenience and speed to customers who take transit and other public transportation frequently," said Michael Mullagh, ViVOtech CEO. "We are also encouraged to see that merchant card payments and opt-in smart poster applications enabled by ViVOtech software through the same NFC mobile phone were also highly used by the trial participants."

ViVOtech developed the wallet software for the NFC mobile phones and the OTA card provisioning servers that Sprint used for the trial. This enabled participants to remotely download their BART fare and Jack Ca$h gift cards onto their mobile phones, check their card balances, review previous transactions, automatically top up their cards and use their phones to pay for BART fares and Jack in the Box food. ViVOtech also provided the contactless payment devices that read the NFC-enabled chips at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Posted to the site on 6th October 2008