Sacramento Transit Readies Contactless Tap-to-Pay Rollout

Sacramento riders will soon enjoy the convenience of tapping their card to pay as they board a train or bus, like a growing number of public transit users across the nation.

Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) will roll out its new Tap2Ride program early next year, in a technological advancement aimed at making it easier than ever to pay to ride transit. It’s a move that could all but retire the prepaid digital ticketing technology stored in the network’s app. Instead, riders will simply pull out a contactless credit or debit card, or the digital wallet on their mobile device, and tap it at the reader for payment.

The project is part of a new “Digital Identity” service, which is a partnership with the California Department of Technology and the California Integrated Travel Project (Cal-ITP). A pilot program began in 2021 with Cal-ITP and other partners.

“This was a true pilot in the sense that SacRT was the first transit agency in California to put a real-time fare collection system on board light rail vehicles,” said Jessica Gonzalez, director of marketing, communications and public information at SacRT, in an email. In 2023, the technology was expanded to the SacRT bus fleet.

The official launch date for the entire program has not yet been set but is planned for early 2025, SacRT officials said.

In concert with Tap2Ride, SacRT is introducing a new 50 percent discount fare program for veterans and seniors. Riders can sign up at the Cal-ITP website.

“In this modern era, fare payments are going to get a lot easier because they are integrated into our customers’ everyday lives,” SacRT General Manager and CEO Henry Li said in a statement. “You simply use the card you already have in your wallet or purse.”

These type of contactless, tap-to-ride technologies are being adapted by an increasing number of transit agencies, like the OMNY system used by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City. Other programs have been introduced in Boston, Miami and cities across California, as part of the Cal-ITP initiative.

The shift to contactless payment using the same technology found in virtually all retail locations marks the idealized merger of tech and convenience that riders expect, experts said. In the world of transit technology, this development is known as “open-loop payment,” meaning the digital ticketing payment system is open to multiple payment options. In short, riders no longer need to download and open an app unique to the transit system. Any payment card will do.

“Transit agencies have spent decades trying to figure how to make it easier for riders to pay,” Josh Martiesian, head of urban mobility for North America at Visa, said on a transit panel Nov. 14 at the CoMotion LA conference. Eighty percent of agencies that have moved to open-loop payments can tie this adoption to an increase in ridership, he added — in some cases, as high as 10 percent over a two-year period.

Tap and pay “is becoming something that we’re very used to. And it’s become widely used and widely adopted,” panelist Ben Lebedin, strategic solutions leader for enterprise verticals for U.S. Bank-Elavon, said during CoMotion LA.

“The friction at the point of payment” is often enough to dissuade people from using transit, Lebedin said. “If now, there’s the technology to be able to tap and ride, like we can tap and buy gum … I feel like now is the time. There has to be a better way.”

About 90 percent of transit riders are expecting their transit provider to enable contactless, open-loop payments, Martiesian said. He added that surveys show that riders would ride more if paying for transit was easier.

“These are all factors that go into discussions that help justify some of the investments that need to be made,” he said.

When Tap2Ride goes live in Sacramento, all other payment forms the system has traditionally accepted, like cash and the ZipPass feature on the mobile app, will still be accepted.

“All fare payment options will still be available. The Tap2Ride program will be another option for riders to pay, especially by helping to remove some of the barriers for payment ensuring equability,” Gonzalez said. “We are working on a consolidated mobile app, which we hope to roll out in 2025, that could consolidate fare payment options and provide trip-planning assistance using a single app.”

This article first appeared in Government Technology, sister publication to Industry Insider — California.