Cellphones can take photos, send e-mails and wake you up in the morning. In the not-so-distant future, they might pay train fare and cover the tab for breakfast too.
First Data Corp., Bay Area Rapid Transit, Sprint and other partners are several weeks into a pilot program testing cellphones as payment devices.
About 200 participants in the program pay their transit fares by waving specially equipped Samsung cellphones over readers on more than 1,000 gates at BART stations, said James Fang, a director with the transit system.
Fares are automatically deducted. When balances get below $10, the cellphones are designed to automatically transfer money from a customer’s bank or credit card. The transfer system uses technology from SpeedPay, a Western Union company.
The phones also have accounts to cover meals at Jack in the Box restaurants.
In a third use, the phones can read chips in posters placed by advertisers, providing directions to the nearest store, handing out coupons and feeding news updates into the phones.
“It is a nice peek at what the future will look like,” said Barry McCarthy, the president of First Data Mobile Solutions.
Greenwood Village-based First Data’s interest in the technology is multifold. The company processes electronic payments, provides stored-value cards, or gift cards, and equips merchants with the readers that can take contactless payments.
The test, McCarthy said, is the first of its kind that uses two forms of currency on a single phone: BART and, for the restaurant, “Jack Cash.”
For merchants, the new payment system speeds transactions and, like stored-value cards, offers a lower-cost option than transactions through traditional credit- and debit-card networks.
The chips in the Samsung phones use “near field communications,” which avoids tying up the cellular network.
For transit authorities, the technology eliminates the need to print thousands of paper tickets, which can jam readers, and speeds the time it takes people to get through the system, Fang said.
Fang envisions the day when BART riders pay their fares with a cellphone and then buy game tickets off a poster of the sports team they are riding to see.
Talks are underway with transit systems in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago regarding the technology, Fang said.
BART’s net costs were about $200,000 to equip all of its gates.
Fang said customers testing the technology are giving positive feedback.
“We think this is going to replace all the fare instruments. Everybody has got a phone,” he said.
Given that most users replace their phones every 18 months to two years, the new technology could be implemented quickly, McCarthy predicts.
Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com
