Transport Payments Asia Pacific

Welcome and opening address
Payment Systems Department, The State Bank of Vietnam
Transport & ICT, World Bank Group

Introduction to this year’s forum, theme and objectives, business and technology areas to be discussed.
Greg Pote, Chairman, APSCA

A Perspective on Commuter Travel in the UK
One of the leading operators in the UK discusses how technology is transforming the way that customers engage with and use public transport, and how moving passengers to a low-touch engagement offers new ways to optimise the retailing of transit and transport services. This is illustrated through a daily commute.

- Moving people from ticket office to self-service to app to ibeacons
- The journey through smart cards, barcoding and contactless payments
- Innovations in customer information services
- Account-based ticketing (ABT): a case study from Brighton

David Maitland, Business Unit Director and General Manager, Go Ahead Retail Services

National Interoperability for Transport Payments in Japan
In 2013 Japanese operators launched national interoperability across all public transport payments systems. JR East explains what was required to achieve this and the outcomes over the last 5 years, including benefits for customers and impact for operators. The presentation also covers recent developments in transport ticketing in Japan.

- Planning, agreement, design and development to achieve national interoperability
- Inter vs intra region interoperability, impact on number of passengers and journeys
- Enhanced auto top-up to support customers for longer commuter journeys (e.g. Shinkansen)
- Cloud-based mobile acceptance of Suica retail payments using standard smartphones

Tomohiko Umekawa, Deputy General Manager, IT & Suica Business Development Headquarters, East Japan Railway Company (JR East)
Makoto Nishigoori, General Affairs Department General Affairs Section Manager, PASMO

Refreshments

Considerations for issuers, schemes and operators
Accepting open-loop payment products, such as EMV contactless cards or mobile wallets, for public transport fare payments can deliver improved convenience to customers. Offering customers additional fare payment options can also benefit both transport operators and transport ticketing schemes as well as the third-party payment product issuers but there are commercial and practical considerations to be addressed. This session highlights benefits and considerations for accepting third-party open-loop payment products as fare media.

- Accepting third-party fare payments is a significant trend in public transport ticketing. What benefits does this offer to customers, to payment product issuers, and public transport operators?
- For customers that do not have a bank account, who would be responsible for issuing prepaid EMV contactless cards to those customers: banks, transport ticketing schemes, or other organisations?
- What is the impact of accepting EMV contactless payments or mobile wallets on the acceptance devices in public transport schemes, on fare transactions and processing, and on risk management?
- What are the range of possible open-loop third-party payment media that transport operators could accept? Which would be easiest to accept, and which are likely to be most popular with customers?
- Public transport ticketing systems typically have complex fare structures and multiple fare concessions that need to be offered to customers. How can these be provided by accepting third-party payments?

Viewpoint 1: Nguyen Quang Minh, Deputy CEO, Research and Development, National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS) [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Jamie Fu, Director, Business Development, Mastercard [~20min]
Viewpoint 3: Mick Spiers, Vice President, Revenue Collection Systems, Asia Pacific, Thales [~20min]

Discussions: Preparing to accept third-party fare media [~30min]
What is the business case for open-loop payments in transit and for transport authorities accepting third-party fare media? Will it be commercially feasible, or socially acceptable, to implement acceptance of EMV-based fare media in markets where many public transport customers are unbanked or underbanked? What are the commercial and technical issues for integrating legacy transport ticketing systems with EMV devices/QR code readers, and upgrading ticketing systems to support both account-based and card-based ticketing? What are the respective responsibilities of transport authorities accepting open-loop payments, banks issuing EMV contactless cards and other parties issuing open-loop mobile wallets? Is there a need for national coordination and guidelines for transport authorities accepting open-loop payments as well as the providers of open-loop payment products which

Lunch

The shift from media-based to server-centric fare collection
Extensive coverage of the Transport for London (TfL) scheme may have encouraged the idea that account-based ticketing (ABT) is nothing more than accepting EMV contactless cards for fare payments. The reality is, account-based ticketing could be implemented with closed-loop contactless cards, with operator or third-party mobile payment products, without accepting EMV contactless cards for fare payments, and in off-line scenarios. This session explores different ABT scenarios being implemented today and why ABT is likely to become the future of transport payments.

- In an ABT system the fare media is only an identifier linking customers to their back-office account. EMV contactless cards are only one type of fare media. What some others that could be used?
- How can closed-loop contactless transport cards support account-based ticketing, why are they likely to be used for most ABT transactions and how does this benefit transport operators?
- Is there a sufficiently strong business case for stand-alone EMV ABT systems and back-offices as add-ons to existing card-based ticketing systems without fare integration into a complete ABT system?
- Closed-loop transport cards are still the highest performance transit fare media except for the need to load cards with value, tickets etc. Are ABT systems the only solution to this problem?
- How does a complete account-based ticketing system make it easier to deliver digital customer services so that passengers can purchase and manage transport products online and over mobile devices?

Viewpoint 1: Silvester Prakasam, Head of Business Unit, Fare System, MSI Global [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Paradon Nitaya, Business Development Director, Bangkok Payment Solutions [~20min]

Discussions: Transitioning to complete ABT systems [~30min]
ABT systems in Asia appear more likely to include both open-loop and closed-loop fare media acceptance with a growing variety of fare media types that will include QR codes, mobile and BLE in addition to transport and bank cards. Closed-loop transport cards are essential for complete account-based ticketing unless the plan is simply for a full-fare PAYG add-on to support tourists and itinerant customers. A complete account-based ticketing system where the transport authority is the back-office and manages all the payment sources connected to it can offer PAYG, season tickets (period passes), concession passes and entitlements to a complete customer base. An add-on ABT solution designed to accept EMV contactless payment cards helps to solve the costly single journey problem and support tourists and itinerant customers but will not support concessions or the complete customer base.

Refreshments

Pathways to integration and interoperability of transport payments services
Several important mass transit projects developing in HCMC, Hanoi and Danang, for urban metros, extended BRT/bus systems as well as toll roads, are currently set to deploy different electronic ticketing systems without integration of transport payments or interoperability between transport modes. In the world’s fastest developing region, this is not the first occurrence of this scenario. This session aims to explore options for solving the problem of ongoing public transport projects in Vietnam [or any market] that plan to deploy different payment solutions.

Viewpoint 1: Eric Turner, Transport Analyst, Transport & ICT Global Practice, World Bank Group [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Hiroshi Anzo, Senior Project Formulation Advisor, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) - [invited] [~20min]
Viewpoint 3: Sangmin Hyun, Senior Sales Representative, Korea Smart Card Co., Ltd (KSCC) [~20min]
Viewpoint 4: Ting Chen, President EasyCard Corporation [~15min]

Introduction to agenda for day 2, speakers and session objectives.
Greg Pote, Chairman, APSCA

Delivering improved customer experience
There is a resurgence of interest in mobile solutions to public transport payments. Mobile transport ticketing offers solutions to a range of challenges in transport payments schemes including ticket sales, reloading and top up; single journey tickets; managing visitors and itinerant customers; as well as delivering information, schedules and timetables to passengers. This session explores the different mobile payment service options available to transport operators and how they can deliver a significantly improved public transport experience for customers.

Viewpoint 1: S.L. Wong, Regional Marketing Manager, Transport & Ticketing, Infineon Technologies [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Michael Zerelli, Vice President Digital Sales & Director, Gemalto [~20min]
Viewpoint 3: J.T. Jian, Assistant GM of Product Department, UnionPay International [~20min]
Viewpoint 4: Anuj Goel, General Manager - Head (AFC), Mumbai Metro One [~20min]1

Discussions: Will mobile QR code transport payments overtake mobile NFC?
Recently public transport operators in India and China have launched QR code-based mobile transport payments initiatives and other operators in Asia look set to follow. So far this is mainly acceptance of third-party mobile payment products by transport operators. This is focused on providing customers with more flexible ticketing options, particularly for itinerant travellers purchasing single journey tickets. What is the business case for transport authorities to implement new transport ticketing equipment to accept QR code-based mobile payments when their entire ticketing infrastructure is contactless? Is this driven by the sheer volume of customers using the mobile QR payment products? Mobile NFC payment transactions are growing faster in transport ticketing then at the retail point-of-sale, but will they be overtaken by QR code-based mobile transport payments?

Refreshments

Best practices for transitioning to open-loop fare payments
Transport for London (TfL) is not the only case study of a public transport scheme accepting EMV contactless from which other public transport operators (PTOs) should study best practices. This session looks at lessons learned from cities with populations ranging from 150,000 to 5 million and different public transport infrastructures in the UK and Australia that include rail, bus, ferries and more. This will also explore the latest findings about business models and strategies to manage risk when accepting bank-issued payment cards in transit.

Viewpoint 1: Lewis Clark, Executive Director, Information and Ticketing Services, Customer Services Division, Transport for NSW [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Michael Walters, Independent Payments Consultant [~20min]
Viewpoint 3: Manoj Sugathan, Senior Director, Chip, Contactless & Transit Solutions, Visa [~20min]

Discussions: How to manage EMV contactless payments in transit [~30min]
An opportunity to quiz experts on operational and risk management considerations related to account-based and open-loop ticketing models for transport operators accepting contactless EMV payment cards and devices. A major concern for operators is managing the risk of accepting EMV contactless payments in off-line scenarios. How does risk change when accepting open-loop payments? How can innovative use of lists help to manage risk? What agreements should transport authorities aim for with card issuing banks? What is the role of the schemes? How should transport authorities manage declines on open-loop payments and what are the available options for debt recovery? What are the current empirical data for declines, do declines reduce over time, and what are effective debt recovery strategies? What are the typical reasons for declines? What differences are there between accepting local and foreign EMV contactless payment cards?

Lunch

Mobile cloud-based ticketing, ticketing-as-a-service
While transport operators face cost constraints they are also under pressure to offer new mobile and Internet-driven services demanded by customers. In contrast to legacy transport ticketing infrastructures, cloud-based solutions offer the flexibility to quickly and easily offer new and innovative services. This session explores whether cloud-based mobile ticketing and ticketing-as-a-service solutions are a better route to providing the lower costs and simple operations which many PTOs require for AFC, while also enabling the innovative digital transport payments and passenger services required by customers today.

Viewpoint 1: Hary Permadi Kartono, Director of Sales, ASEAN, Secure Issuance, HID Global [~20min]
Viewpoint 2: Ihar Bayarenka, Business Development Director for SAPAC region, NXP Semiconductors [~20min]
Viewpoint 3: Miki Sziksai, Snapper Services [~20min]

Discussions: From the cloud to ABT to ticketing-as-a-service [~30min]
Cloud-based ticketing can transform the way that customers engage with and use public transport by shifting their interactions from ticketing offices and retail outlets to self-service. But does the success of the strategy depend upon the proportion of customers using smart phones, and how many customers are willing to use mobile payments? Cloud-based mobile ticketing and account-based ticketing are both server-based approaches to transport fare payments. What do they have in common and is cloud-based ticketing the first step on the road towards account-based ticketing? Transport operators can continue along this roadmap by using emerging digital, cloud and account-based ticketing to develop cost-effective ticketing-as-a-service approaches that enable opex-based, rather than capex-based approaches to automated fare collection. Could this pay-per-use approach to AFC help to shift the large number of small to medium-sized public transport operators from paper to electronic ticketing?

Refreshments

Enabling customers to buy door-to-door travel services
The vision of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) proposes over-the-top services that integrate all public/private transport options into a personalised model to enable the customer to travel from door-to-door as efficiently as possible, typically for a monthly account-based fee. Innovative cloud-based on-demand transport services can connect with public transport services through MaaS aggregators/agents that display, book and pay for mobility services between transport providers, offering complete travel plans, prices and a single payment for customers.

Viewpoint: Jerry Lim, Country Head, Grab Vietnam [~20min]

Discussions: Mobility-as-a-Service in Asia [~30min]
For years the industry has been focused on implementing integrated multimodal smart ticketing for public transport. But customers make door-to-door journeys which public transport does not always support. The rapidly proliferating on-demand private transport and mobility services can bridge the gaps at either end of a public transport journey but they need to be integrated with public transport. What organisations, MaaS aggregators or others, can combine mobility providers into complete journey plans at best prices with a single payment for the customer and then reimburse all mobility providers that contributed to the customer's journey? In this scenario who "owns" the customer relationship? What would commercial arrangements look like and what they be dominated by larger mobility providers, possibly stifling innovation? Is regulation, or at least guidelines if not governance required? And of course any seamless door-to-door journey must include a seamless or even invisible payment process.

▪ Conclusions, thanks and next APSCA events
Greg Pote, Chairman, APSCA

▪ Closing remarks and thanks
Speaker to be advised, National Payment Corporation of Vietnam (NAPAS)

End