eftpos, Australian electronic funds transfer company, said it is fast-tracking its Tap & Pay technology on public transport, such as buses, trains, and ferries in Australia.
EFTPOS, which stands for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale, is used as a method of payment for goods and services. In Australia and New Zealand, it is the brand name of a specific system used for such payments.
The company announced that it will be “fast-tracking the enablement of eftpos Tap & Pay technology for use on buses, trains and ferries, following new consumer research that shows Australian commuters would prefer to pay for transport with eftpos debit.”
eftpos MD Stephen Benton said his team is already in discussions with a number of state governments.
The new transport team would also focus on enabling eftpos Tap & Pay on parking meters and vending machines, the company said.
“As tap payments are introduced on transport systems across Australia, it is vital for Eftpos debit to be included to ensure all Australians have access to the benefits of this technology and can use their own money, rather than credit,” Benton said.
“The inclusion of eftpos, in addition to the international credit card schemes, will also help drive competition and better outcomes for State Governments and taxpayers.”
The announcement comes after a research conducted by eftpos showed that Australian commuters would prefer to pay for transport with Eftpos debit. Of the 1,500 commuters surveyed, Eftpos said debit was their preferred way to pay for transport by 37% of respondents, reports ZDNet.
Australia has one of the highest usage rates of contactless payments, according to Mastercard, which reports that its PayPass “tap-and-go” functionality is used in around 80 percent of face-to-face transactions. Additionally, the country has one of the highest concentrations of point-of-sale devices in the world, with 960,000 Eftpos terminals.
Cubic Transportation System currently supplies New South Wales with its go card and is also the provider of the Opal public transport system in NSW.
Speaking at the WT Wearable Technologies Conference in Sydney in December, 2017, Lance Blockley, managing director of The Initiatives Group and part of the evaluation committee that chose Cubic to rollout Opal, said Cubic was chosen as it accomplished a part of the requirement that needed all of the hardware to be installed from day one with open loop compatibility.
“In the London system, they had to rip out all of the touchpads in the tube and reinstall because they weren’t EMV [Europay, Mastercard, Visa] capable,” he said. “But here, we are fortunate enough to have the right equipment.”
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Commuters in Sydney can now choose to use Mastercard, Visa, and American Express cards to pay for some public transport trips across the Opal network.
