Transit Mobile Payment Is A PF Dream Come True

On Monday (Nov. 16), San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee officially brought his city’s public transit system into the mobile payment era, following similar moves by cities across the globe. Just last month, the totality of London’s black cabs said that they will accept mobile payment.

These efforts are crucial for the payment facilitator community as nowhere is the need for the speed and convenience of mobile payments more needed than in urban public transit. Of potentially greater significance are the huge volumes of consumers that are using such systems—and the extreme tendency of such communities to get comfort from what other travelers are doing. In short, successful transportation trials have a far greater chance of meaningfully moving the acceptance needle than almost any other vertical. As much as coffee shops may gravitate to every kind of mobile payment imaginable, they simply don’t have the volume—nor the copycat psychology—that comes with the transportation territory.

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