The Department of Transportation expects the pilot implementation of the automated fare collection system, which will run in about a year, will be successful and enable the transportation sector to seamlessly adapt to the digital trend.
In a television interview on Monday, Transportation undersecretary for railways Timothy John Batan said the AFCS is designed to accept more payment cards, aside from Land Bank of the Philippines cards.
"Currently, this automated fare collection system with the LandBank is only in selected units and routes because in the first nine to 12 months we will only be conducting pilot testing," Batan said.
During the project launch last week, Batan already assured that the government will future-proof the recently launched automated fare collection system to ensure that it will be free from monopoly as public transportation goes digital.
Open fare system
"We want an open automated fare collection system to avoid a monopoly and what that achieves is choice — choice for our public transport operators on which equipment to use, AFCS provider, and overall maintenance they have to adopt, plus lowering the overall cost of our transportation service," he said.
The DoTr and state-run Land Bank of the Philippines kicked off the pilot operation of the automated fare collection system project. About 150 PUV units in specified pilot sites in the National Capital Region, Central Luzon, Calabarzon and Metro Cebu will join the AFCS PPT.
The AFCS allows the convenient use of EMV-compliant contactless credit, debit, and prepaid bank cards as cashless payment instruments in public transport modes.
Currently, only Landbank prepaid and credit contactless cards can be accepted and processed in the 150 participating PUVs during the first month of the AFCS pilot testing period.
