16 Jul 2007
Beijing's city government has contracted with a U.S.-based firm to add retail payment to the region's smart transit cards. KPay, the Chinese subsidiary of U.S.-based Vesta Corp., said this week it has launched retail payments on the contactless transit cards, approximately 12 million of which have been issued for bus, subway and taxi rides. Some 110 terminals that accept payments from the cards are being installed in Quick Mart convenience stores in Beijing, Mark Atkeson, a Vesta vice president who oversees Chinese operations, told CardLine Global. The installations should be complete by August. "We plan to have 2,000 terminals installed by the end of 2007," he says. While convenience stores represent the first target for the payment service, other merchants, such as restaurants, could one day accept the cards, Lu Hong Fa, general manager of KPay, told CardLine Global. While further details about the scheme were not immediately available, the program follows the lead of other transit-and-retail card combinations, including Hong Kong's Octopus card, Vesta said in a statement. Thousands of Hong Kong stores accept that card. Contactless payment technology, which offers the prospect of fast, low-value transactions without the need for customers signing receipts, would seem a natural fit for mass transit environments. Indeed, U.K-based Barclaycard recently announced details of a card that London-area commuters could use to pay for subway and bus rides and retail goods, part of a large-scale push toward contactless payments in that country [CardLine Global, 10 July]. But such schemes generally have faced questions about how banks and transit operators work together and how they will handle logistical issues such as card maintenance.