NYC Subway NFC Payments Far From Reality

There’s been a lot of chatter in New York City as to when the old-school paper tickets would get up to speed with technological advancements.

Meaning NFC payments and the ability to pay using a smartphone. Well, according to a new report, that won’t happen anytime soon. In fact, that vision is probably at least five years out, according to a recent report by The Verge.

The latest update available from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is that it is under contract for 69 months to install a new fare payment system, which puts the earliest likely scenario for the project to be done in the year 2021. To put that into context, there would be two more presidential elections before that would happen.

Oh, and the MTA hasn’t even picked the firm to make the transition happen, which means it could be even longer. Once it gets the plans in motion, here’s the vision for how the system would work. First, it will involve “an integrated, reliable and convenient fare payment and collection system” that would enable customers to tap a contactless payment card, smart card or smartphone. That means no more yellow MetroCards and no more scanning cards. (Or watching tourists fail from sliding them wrong. Or Hillary Clinton, which happened recently when it took her five times to slide the card for it to work.)

It was only in 2003 when the MTA transitioned from tokens to cards.

The bidding for this project ends on June 23, 2016, will cost an estimated $10 million+. But it will likely be far above that, as the MTA board said just two years ago that it could cost as much as $450 million. But it was also projected last year that NFC payments would be available by 2018.

In general, the concept of smartphone train ticketing simply hasn’t kept up to speed. Chicago rolled out its contactless option with Ventra in Oct. 2014 — a rollout that came with plenty of hiccups (cards not working, double charges, etc.).