TriMet, INIT and moovel offer innovative fare payments in Portland-Vancouver Metropolitan Area
Just months after the successful launch of TriMet’s open payment Hop FastpassTM system by INIT, another milestone is being celebrated. The first regional account-based virtual transit fare card has reached full launch status and can now be used by riders in the Portland-Vancouver Metro Area. Today, TriMet, C-TRAN and Portland Streetcar passengers can use the virtual smart card within Google Pay to pay their transit fare. TriMet, INIT, and moovel worked to enable this final ground-breaking development with Google Pay.
The core intelligence of the Hop system is INIT’s back-office management tool, MOBILEvario. When a rider taps their Android device with the virtual card to any of the 1,200 INIT fare validators, MOBILEvario calculates the fare, validates the transaction against the back office account, and displays the fare validation result to the rider in real-time.
“The use of virtual transit cards marks the beginning of a new era in the fare collection world,” says Thomas Schaich, INITs Project Engineer. “The vision of a secure transit payment solution without carrying a card has now finally been realized.”
Having the ability to pay with a regular Hop card, virtual card, contactless bank card, or mobile wallet frees riders from the worry associated with how many, or what kind of tickets they should buy. They simply tap, hop on and ride. The virtual Hop card also includes daily and monthly fare capping.
INIT celebrates the history-making efforts that went into the launch of the virtual transit fare card which is now impacting the future of fare payments in Portland. The virtual Hop card is available for download from the Google Play Store.