No more wasting time buying a paper ticket, which must be kept and then passed at the turnstiles on the way out: from yesterday, Wednesday 28 June, it is possible to go through the turnstiles in all 113 underground stations – both in and out – exactly as it has been done for some time in the supermarket and that is simply by approaching your contactless payment card, thanks to the POS installed by Atm in collaboration with Visa and Mastercard. All cards (even prepaid and debit cards) of these circuits can therefore be used, provided they are contactless, and the passenger will be charged the best possible rate: 1,50 euros for the traditional ticket for a single journey, 4,50 euros for a day ticket in if he makes three or more trips in the same day. Therefore, in the case of four journeys, the system will directly charge the 4,50 euros for the daily ticket instead of the 6 euros for the 4 single tickets.
“In the future – ATM general manager Arrigo Giana explained at the press conference – it will be possible to extend this system to weekly and monthly passes as well, in order to make payment to consumers even faster and more agile, and probably within a year and a half we will be able to activate the system also on surface vehicles. For that, however, we have to wait for the full operation of 5G in Milan, which is now still in the testing phase. Reasonably it should be ready at the end of 2019, in the meantime we will start gearing up in parallel". Milan is the first Italian city and one of the few in the world to use the contactless payment system: the experiment has already had great success in London, where it has almost retired the legendary Oyster Card, and is already operational in Moscow, Chicago, Vancouver and Singapore.
An experimentation phase launched in record time, and which will be further strengthened between now and the end of the year: "In the space of a month - explained Giana from Atm - we installed 250 POS devices, which are fully recognizable and distinct from those where validate traditional paper tickets. By the end of 2018 we will have double that, i.e. 500, throughout the Milan metro". Metro which is increasingly the flagship of the ATM network, which every day (between metro and surface vehicles) transports more than 2 million people, for a total of almost 800 million passengers a year. "At the moment, around 70% of our fleet is green - added Giana -, but we aim to become 100% green with the electrification of all buses".
The system devised by Atm with Visa and Mastercard is so fast and intuitive that it doesn't even require registration or a specific app: on the contrary, it is also possible to pay with smartphones and smartwatches on which your payment card has been digitised. And control by ATM staff, who will clearly continue to be there, is also quick and easy: just give the card (or the device) to the inspectors who, using a special handheld device, can check if the passenger is in order with the journey. The only caveat: the journey must always begin and end with the same card and it is not possible, at the moment, to purchase multiple tickets, given that to avoid involuntary purchases (perhaps passing the card more than once by mistake) the The system currently provides for an interval of 2 minutes between one pass and another.
However, even if contactless payment is not yet possible on board, it will in fact be possible to use the ticket purchased with one's own card also on surface vehicles, as long as it is within the maximum duration set by the travel document (ie 90 minutes for each ticket) and, of course, as long as the journey starts on the underground. One more opportunity for the Milanese who are notoriously among the major users of public transport: according to Connected Consumer data, 93% of them make at least one trip a day, 88% make two, half traveling on the ATM network more than an hour a day. "After making Milan the capital of fashion, design and food, we are also making it the capital of innovation," said Michele Centemero, Mastercard's country manager for Italy.
