Starting on Wednesday, April 24, a pilot project, a Tap & Pay system, for contactless payments via bank cards and digital wallets has been launched on Express bus lines of the Athens International Airport.
Passengers on the bus lines (X93, X95, X96, X97) can use bank cards or activated device cards (smartphone, smartwatch) for payments, including contactless options.
The system reads cards or digital wallets, charging the fares directly.
with Tap & Pay, passengers moving to and from Athens International Airport can now alternatively pay for their ticket contactless by swiping their bank card over the bus validation machines with the relevant indication of contactless transactions.
Equipment installed on selected buses “reads” the card or digital wallet and charges the value of the trip to the passenger’s account.
The contactless fare payments are in addition to ATH.ENA Ticket or ATH.ENA Card.
By 2024, contactless ticket transactions will expand to all public transport – buses, trolley buses, tram and metro -run by OASA active in the Greek capital Athens.
The initiative aims to simplify fare payment and eliminate the need for ticket purchases from vending machines.
The alternative possibility of using a bank card (debit, credit, or prepaid) to board public transport means marks the entry of Athens Transport into a new digital era for the transportation services provided to the passenger public, organizers said during an event introducing the new project.
source: athenstransport.com
…and one more big brother entanglement. your entire life in the ‘cloud’ , every single second depending on some unseen, unaccountable digital surveillance machine to ‘allow’ you even to ride the bus or not. forget about buying a ticket and giving it to someone else. forget about having a few spare tickets for tomorrow… your entire life just an online just-in-time database client. and you know the people who think they own everything salivate at the mere thought of ‘closing the loop’ and having full control over every last transaction everyone might try to make.
how about a 100% offline system instead, like the old paper tickets? now that was convenient. you could buy a pack of them and always have a few extra around, or pick them up at almost any periptero or convenience store, or even give one to someone else, and they worked without any network connection… of course thats the problem, the sore losers in charge of things want to always be able to turn off or control what you thought you bought fair and square.
It’s the “internet of bodies” agenda, i.e. dystopia on super strength steroids 🙁
I haven’t been to Athens for 14 years so I don’t know if things still work the same but, back then, if you bought a ticket from the airport to the center that ticket could then be used for 24 hours on the central metro and bus services. Does that still apply? If so how will it function under the new system where you won’t have a physical ticket to prove that you have paid or do the new machines issue physical tickets?
As long as you use the same payment card at each fare gate/ validating machine, the system treats the card as the same ticket.