Contactless transactions: Finally the stop at the tolls - Changes in the means of Transportation tickets

How would you feel if instead of a Metro ticket we used the "smart" mobile phone or the contactless debit card directly to open the bars and if the toll stops were soon a thing of the past?

ΑThis will be the reality in the near future, as promised by Bill Gajda, Senior Innovation and Strategic Planner at Visa.

Technological developments, as everything shows, bring dominance of contactless transactions, rapid development of transactions and payments through smart phones, ie digital money, rapid integration of payment systems in cars and dozens of objects and devices.

Speaking to APE-MPE, Bill Gajda argued that contactless transactions either via cards or mobile phones have now gained the trust of the world internationally and it is estimated that they will fully dominate in the coming years for both large and small amounts of transactions.

Poland, by way of example, is the first country where 100% of transactions take place intact, he said, noting that the upward trend will continue in all countries.

Regarding Greece, Visa's Gajda said he was impressed both by the large increase achieved in the implementation of contactless transactions and transactions with plastic money in general since the imposition and after the capital controls, but also for the continuation of this increase after the almost their abolition which has taken place since last summer.

What comes in the near future

The Visa executive explains that a typical example for the upcoming innovations is the single ticket for all means of transport: metro, buses, trams and any other means of transport, even private, such as cars, bicycles, etc.

Only it will not be the classic paper or electronic ticket we knew until today.

The ticket will now be the ticket itself, either in plastic form or integrated in the mobile phone.

In the metro for example, in simple words, the passenger will be able to go through the bars and enter the metro stations simply with his card, without buying a ticket. The passenger who uses his card for subway trips will be charged at the end of the day with an amount depending on the trips he has made, by choosing the most economical solution offered in the system.

Visa in collaboration with other companies is in the process of developing the new product that already exists on a pilot and commercial basis, such as in London for the metro, buses, etc.

In Greece, according to the same sources, Visa has come to meetings with competent bodies on this issue and there has been interest in its implementation.

Finally the toll stops?

Another area where revolutionary changes are already taking place due to the interconnectedness and penetration of the Internet of Things (IoT) is the automotive sector.

As we recently saw at the largest digital technology show in the world at the Mobile World Congress concluded in Barcelona, ​​almost all car manufacturers adopt built-in and automated payment systems.

Car-related payments, says Bill Gajda, will now be made without human intervention, such as for parking, tolls, product purchases at open-air stations, etc. They will be automated as cars already have intelligent payment systems that communicate directly with the corresponding payment system in the above instruments. In other words, the transactions become "invisible".

When asked about security in transactions, the top executive at Visa is absolutely reassuring. Transactions become even more secure with the advent of new technologies. From handwriting, PIN, digital signature we go to biometric identification and identification that is extremely secure and reliable: handprinting, voice recognition, face recognition and even human identification. Mobile phones now have the ability to identify their owner by the movement of their hand, by how they hold the phone and how they use it. In a few seconds if they realize that the user of the mobile phone is not the one and the owner of it are deactivated, he points out to us. The time when people will not mediate at all to make payments is not in the distant future, has already begun with the first applications coming to Greece.

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