Yes top post peter, always a good read.In the short term late...

Yes top post peter, always a good read.

In the short term late April we should learn of the preferred tenderers for the AAC. Interesting how the sp performs leading to that announcement.

I agree also that it may be another year before we see profits unfortunately, but on the upside for future earnings from non transit revenues or more importantly the role erg will play is not as difficult to establish as it once was.

from cardtech recently....
"Collins sees a gradual convergence between contactless banking and transit cards, which use compatible smart card technology. He notes, however, that each transit agency has its own fare scheme, which means each deal between a bank card issuer and a transit agency must be customized. "That's where the real complexity comes in-getting those business agreements between the open payment systems and complex transport tariff fares," he says.

"Towards the end of the forecast period, Collins predicts a move to the use of mobile phones with contactless Near Field Communication technology, which allows consumers to pay by tapping their handset against a reader. ABI projects that 30% of mobile phones shipped in 2011, or 450 million handsets, will carry NFC chips. (2007-03-16)"
Just expanding on that Banksys has recently organised a jv with a number of banks and telcos for mobile payments.

Regarding the fees I noticed an article concerning Banksys and the exchange fees for mobile payments.

The system is simple enough," To conduct a transaction, the merchant sends a text message to the system. The consumer then receives a text message asking him to confirm the payment, using a PIN code that is different from the one used for his debit card. Both parties then receive a text-message confirmation that the transaction is complete, and the funds are immediately debited from the consumer's bank account".
But the fees are not cheap the customer pays .25 euro cents per transaction and the merchant pays .49 euro cents. I am not sure if that includes the fee for the text message but I expect it is not included. Therefor the fee could be as high as AUD2.
Mobile users will soon learn there will be cheaper ways to use contactless payment mechanisms.The much cheaper alternative will be the transit scard.

When micro-payments were first introduced in HK's Octopus system merchants were initially reluctant to participate because of the exchange fees.
Today the transit scard is readily accepted by retail businesses but more importantly the transit authorities have become money issuers!
The Octopus scard can be recharged from debit or credit but is also applied and reconciled in much the same way. This method of non-transit contactless payment is no different in Singapore though not as advanced. It appears that all scard transit systems thruout the world are geared toward achieving the same outcomes.

The fees using a transit scard are from my research about half that for mobile payments. Obviously this is all going to take time but the overall picture is becoming clearer.

cheers,
walt.