More discounts available with open payment from California Integrated Travel Project

In November, Monterey Salinas Transit announced that veterans can access their transit discounts by paying with a contactless credit or debit card.  Seniors in the Monterey-Salinas area gained this ability in September of 2022. Seniors in Santa Barbara gained access in 2023.

To use this feature, veterans (or seniors) who are eligible for transit discounts need to create an account on the login.gov website, validate their identity with their drivers license or state-issued ID, and link their credit or debit card.  Login.gov is a secure sign-in service used by the public to sign in to participating government agencies. 

These developments open up the possibility that transit riders in the Bay Area might be able to access discounts for which they are eligible while paying with a credit or debit card, some time after the launch of the next-generation Clipper system in the Fall of 2024.   The Clipper 2.0 system will include an “open payment” feature allowing users to pay with a credit or debit card - but only adult full fare when the system is first launched.

These questions - whether the “Open Payment” feature would work with senior and disability discounts - were the first two questions asked by Commissioners when MTC staff presented in September about the upcoming Open Payment feature to the Network Management Committee that provides policy guidance for the region’s transit coordination initiatives.  MTC Commissioner Dorene Giacopini, who uses a wheelchair, asked whether she could access her disability discount, and Commissioner Dutra-Vernaci asked if a senior could access their senior discount. 

Earlier, MTC staff had told us the reason that they did not initially provide access to discounts with the Clipper 2.0 feature to pay by credit/debit card was that MTC did not want to have to store customers’ credit card information, which would create privacy and security risks.  The Cal-ITP system prevents these risks, and doesn’t store credit card information or other personal data.

This past fall, the Cal-ITP team told the Seamless team that they were working on providing this capability to other groups of people who are eligible for transit discounts.  They expect to have this capability working for people with disabilities, college students, and people with income-based benefits such as MediCal later in 2024.  The Cal-ITP project is open source, and feature development is tracked here.

The Cal-ITP team told us that they did not believe there were inherent technical or hardware barriers preventing MTC’s Clipper 2.0 system, which uses technology developed by Cubic, from leveraging these features that Cal-ITP is developing.  For example, the transit agencies wouldn’t need to install new readers on buses and trains. But it might require software changes and compatibility with the payment service used by the Clipper system behind the scenes.

Given the importance of equity and convenience, we believe the Bay Area should explore the potential to allow transit users to access their discounts when paying for transit with a credit or debit card.   

While this feature will not be a part of the initial launch of the Clipper 2.0 system, it would be a valuable addition as a future upgrade, especially since the Cal-ITP project is adding more types of discounts including people with disabilities.