US transit agency tests first virtual fare card via Android Pay

The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District (TriMet) in Portland, Oregon has undertaken the beta launch of the first virtual public transit card via Android Pay.

Through a partnership just announced with Google, select TriMet riders will now be able to tap and pay their transit fare using a virtual Hop card stored securely in their Android smartphone with Near Field Communication (NFC). The ground-breaking development constitutes a history-making milestone for TriMet, Moovel, the provider of the Hop FastpassTM mobile app, and transport ticketing specialist INIT.

INIT’s back-end processing system, MOBILEvario, serves as the core intelligence for the project processing all forms of payment for the multi-agency system including physical debit or credit cards or digital versions stored in Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung pay, and now virtual Hop FastpassTM transit cards via Android Pay.

When riders taps their devices to any of the 1,200 INIT PROXmobil validators, MOBILEvario calculates the fare, validates the transaction against the back office account, and displays the fare validation result to the rider in real-time. Since all transactions are performed against the back office, riders can get accurate and up to date account information anytime and anywhere.

The Hop Fastpass™ system was designed following an open architecture approach which was a success of the project to allow easy integration with partners like Google. Thanks to the open architecture design, more than a dozen partners associated with the project were integrated without changes to the core system.

Since MOBILEvario is designed as a financial system, its main focus is to account for each transaction performed. The ease of interface to multiple off-the-shelf accounting software provided convenient integration into the existing accounting system. This strong revenue package delivers sophisticated management of earned revenue, deferred revenue, revenue recognition, and revenue sharing. For the multi-agency, bi-state Hop Fastpass™ system, automated clearing of revenues are securely performed. INIT’s first open payments system in Portland-Vancouver has experienced more than 1 million taps since its initial launch last July.

Virtual Hop cards via Android Pay are expected to be available to users of Android smartphones in early 2018 pending the success of the agency’s beta test.