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Laia Bonet, Barcelona's Deputy Mayor for the Digital Transition, demonstrates the use of the new system, Source: Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona
It’s the first city in Spain to implement this
The transport authority of Barcelona, TMB, announced today that it will now be possible to buy a single ticket on the board of its buses just by tapping a bank card on its EMV (Europay Mastercard Visa) readers.
The tech implementation thus makes it the first city in Spain to introduce this for the urban commuters. The measure is likely to prove of great convenience for the millions of tourists who visit the Catalonian capital every year.
What’s more, the system is also suitable for smartphones and smartwatches. It will facilitate the access to buses of sporadic users to public transport (such as tourists); it also avoids physical contacts and speeds up the service.
With this, Barcelona continues on its way forward to pioneer innovative solutions in the sphere of public transit, having also been the first city in Spain to remove the option of cash transactions with the drivers during the first months of the pandemic.
The system supports payments with contactless debit and credit cards from major brands as well as mobile devices that can be integrated into them, such as smartphones and watches. When boarding the bus, all you have to do is bring your card or device closer to the reader located next to the driver’s cabin.
The reader captures the data and manages the ticket purchase via the payment gateway. The electronic transaction is also proof that a valid ticket is available in the event of a ticket inspection, so a paper ticket is not required.
The project has been developed by TMB since the start of the Covid-19 health crisis. The first step, last May, was to put the system into service on pilot lines V3 and 46.
Since then, and on the different bus lines where it has been gradually implemented, have been registered more than 500,000 purchases and validations through the EMV terminals. Now the e-payment readers have been implemented on all 1,070 vehicles of the TMB fleet.
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