Ingenico Providing Contactless Ticketing Solution in Turkey
- Ingenico partners MasterCard (through its M/Chip Advance payment platform) and announces the deployment of a new card gathering ticketing and universal payment features on the Turkish market. The French manufacturer has been in charge of developing the hardware (contactless terminals) and software solution required for the Esparacard project. Turkey-based Garanti Bank is also taking part in this initiative.
- All of Eskisehir’s tramways and buses will be equipped with these devices and travellers will be proposed the prepaid contactless Esparacard card (Eskisehir is the first town to opt for this solution). According to Eskisehir Metropolitan Municipality, integrating this system in the banking infrastructure will make it possible to use cards issued by any banks.
- The prepaid card embeds cardholder-related pieces of information (such as specific discounts – senior, student, etc.) and the credited amounts can be spent in every MasterCard-affiliated store.
- With this large scale deployment, Ingenico is imposing itself on the Turkish market where contactless solutions are especially popular. Garanti Bank and MasterCard, for their part, are strengthening a partnership which has been lasting since 2006 and relying on several contactless trials based on different media –watches, tags, mobile phones, etc.– in various sectors including payment and loyalty.
- Eskisehir stands as a pioneer as it proposes a ticketing solution also to be used at points of sales. This initiative does remind one of Barclays’s OnePulse contactless cards in the UK.
- In the UK, however, the London assembly's transport committee now expresses doubts regarding the security, equity, and even the economic interest of such solutions combining public transportation fair and payment card. In France, Caisse d’Epargne was the first to trial the Citevia card in Reims.
- According to Garanti Bank, Esparacard also fits in the even larger scale plan to drop cash by 2023.