The Sino Visitor Pass will be used for more than just travel purchases
The Sino Visitor Pass aims to promote trade between Singapore and China by making travel easier, as Jon Masters finds out.
Singapore has notched up another first in transportation innovation with announcement of a dual-currency payment card in partnership with the province of Guangdong in China. From the middle of 2014, visitors to Singapore and Guangdong will be able to use a ‘Sino Visitor Pass’ to pay for use of public transportation among other things.
The new contactless smart card is a joint initiative of the Singapore payment card operator EZ-Link and its counterpart the Guangdong Lingnan Pass Company. Securely storing both Singapore Dollars and Chinese Renminbi, the Sino Pass is claimed as a breakthrough in payment platform interoperability.
It remains to be seen whether the new card will prove popular but the take-up of other payment cards in Singapore suggests it will do well. So it can be taken as a new example of what’s possible with political willpower and an open market. According to EZ-Link, besides being a public transport payment card, the Sino Pass will be accepted at over 100,000 shops and restaurants in both cities.
“This collaboration marks a great milestone for both companies, etching a path towards our vision for uninterrupted travel on public transportation, as well as retail and other payments across national borders,” said EZ-Link CEO Nicholas Lee when announcing the Sino Visitor Pass.
The aims of this joint initiative go beyond offering greater convenience for travellers. The payment card partnership has been aided by connections made by a Singapore-Guangdong Collaboration Council (SGCC), which is a governmental partnership targeting mutual benefits of economic growth.
According to reports from an SGCC meeting in August this year, Singapore companies are playing a major role in the economic transformation of Guangdong. In return, in 2012 alone, Singapore welcomed 266,000 tourists from the Chinese province and investment of around US$240 million from Chinese companies establishing a presence in Singapore.
Guangdong is focusing its regeneration efforts on three special economic zones in Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Companies from Singapore stand to benefit from opportunity to contribute to each zone’s development. The Sino Pass transportation card is being encouraged as a means to help it all happen.
The payment card market is buoyant in Singapore, with substantial associated wealth in consumer buying power. Since 2006, an open competitive market has been promoted by Singapore’s ‘contactless e-payment payment application standard’ (CEPAS) for smartcards. There are two main card suppliers, EZ-Link and NETS. Both are offering customers a choice of cards, benefits and topping-up options.
The majority of drivers using Singapore’s roads are able to take advantage of what’s on offer. All vehicles have to be fitted with an in-vehicle unit for communicating with the gantries of the city’s electronic road pricing and car parking systems. Both road charging and car parking payments can be made by a pre-registered credit card, or by having either a NETS CashCard or CEPAS compliant smartcard inserted in the in-vehicle unit.
According to NETS there are 6.5 million CashCards in circulation. In addition there are also NETS Flashpay and the EZ-Link cards which have traditionally been primarily a payment card for public transport in Singapore. However, since the introduction of ‘dual-mode’ IUs in 2008, drivers can now use EZ-Link cards to pay road and parking charges as well as purchases at retail and leisure outlets ranging from coffee shops to swimming pools.
Flashpay offers much the same, including metro and bus fares, road pricing and parking charges, and NETS says there are about 40,000 ‘acceptance points’ across Singapore.
Beyond the benefits for consumers of payment convenience and managing a single account for multiple purchases, it also serves to put road use charges into context as payment for a service. Furthermore, while neither NETS nor EZ-Link set the pricing for transportation, road use or parking in Singapore, the city’s smartcard market is demonstrating interoperability between public and private transport and will soon do so between two countries as well.
So what about elsewhere? Why is it just Singapore that has progressed so far with multimodal and now dual currency smartcards?
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of North America’s EZ-Pass electronic Toll collection system, which now operates across 25 Toll or transportation agencies in 15 states. Despite the maturity of EZ-Pass, it remains fundamentally a tag-based Toll system – applying to some airport parking but not across modes of transport or additional payment services on a significant scale.
Singapore’s advantage as a city with a single transportation agency – the Land Transport Authority – can be seen in comparison to the 25-strong EZ-Pass Interagency Group. Each member agency has its own interests to protect.
“It is disappointing that EZ-Pass has not expanded to apply to more modes and services, but it was surprising that the agencies in at the beginning signed off on the concept at all,” says transportation consultant Larry Yermack.
As chief finance officer of the then Tri-boro Port Authority, Yermack was instrumental in getting EZ-Pass up and running. Recently, he has been acting as a strategic advisor to378 Cubic Transportation Systems. Cubic is promoting its NextCity vision of agencies or operators regulating demand by setting fees and fares across all modes of transport with a single payment system in a given region.
“Electronic Toll collection was a breakthrough for agencies because it identified their customers for the First time. In most cases transit customers are still anonymous. EZ-Pass was the First Toll collection initiative to extend across multiple Toll agencies, but at the time the focus was too much on the media, the tag or card to be used, while not enough attention was paid to the back office processing,” Yermack says.
“With recognition that these are merely financial transaction systems, the implication that the front end is not so crucial starts to open out. A single shared account system has a number of advantages and makes sense from the point of view of the customer who probably would rather not have a separate payment media for the car, ferry, bus and taxi.”
While EZ-Pass succeeded in persuading agencies to relinquish their autonomy, this still represents the main barrier to CROSS-agency multi-modal payment as individual operators do not want to lose control of how their transportation systems are managed. But the message from Cubic is that every operator can retain its own payment media and business rules – fares, offers or specific travel conditions – while sharing a common back office platform.
“Payment systems across multiple operators and modes are some way off but when talking to agencies we find that this is what they want in terms of financial accountability,” says Yermack. “Authorities currently cannot speak to all customers, but via shared payment systems they could be making universal offers in the form of incentives, to reduce traffic congestion for example.
According to recognised metrics if 5% of traffic can be encouraged off the roads, it usually means problem solved.”
In Singapore, the Land Transport Authority is setting the electronic road pricing charges dynamically to target optimal use of the city’s roads. The optimum is defined as road speeds between 20-30 km/hr except for expressways where the optimal range rises to 45-65 km/hr.
If speeds drop, indicating too many vehicles are on the road, ERP rates go up accordingly to encourage a shift in travel patterns. Conversely, if speeds go above the optimal range, the ERP rates are reduced.
In northern Europe, where city congestion charging is relatively prevalent, payment accounting systems are intentionally basic. In Gothenburg, for example – one of the most recent of cities to activate congesting charging – the charge collection is by means of camera recognition of license plates so not requiring an in-vehicle unit or payment card. According to environmental manager Anders Roth of the city’s traffic and public transport authority, Gothenburg is yet to combine road and parking charges. Bus cards are valid for some commuter parking places, however, and Gothenburg is testing a system where public transport, car-sharing, taxi and bike hire are linked through a single service.
It is perhaps the mooted European Electronic Tolling System (EETS) that carries most promise for pan-European Toll payment.
4984 Kapsch TrafficCom completed a successful EETS trial in Poland earlier this year, although activation of a full-scale commercial EETS service seems some way off.
EETS is based on the European Commission’s interoperability directive. The aim is to deliver a pan-European Toll system through an EETS supplier, but the business case is yet to attract a service Provider with meaningful intent.
The First EETS type system is expected to be France’s écotax national truck Toll, if its gains final government approval. Two types of écotax account have been devised. Users can select to subscribe to an EETS account with billing post-journey, or non subscribers will register a pre-pay écotax account which must be credited to authorise the user to drive on French roads.
This way, by providing an EETS option, the écotax delivery and operation consortium6555 Ecomouv will effectively help to start real interoperability between countries’ Toll systems, acting initially as a pseudo EETS.
Singapore has notched up another first in transportation innovation with announcement of a dual-currency payment card in partnership with the province of Guangdong in China. From the middle of 2014, visitors to Singapore and Guangdong will be able to use a ‘Sino Visitor Pass’ to pay for use of public transportation among other things.
The new contactless smart card is a joint initiative of the Singapore payment card operator EZ-Link and its counterpart the Guangdong Lingnan Pass Company. Securely storing both Singapore Dollars and Chinese Renminbi, the Sino Pass is claimed as a breakthrough in payment platform interoperability.
It remains to be seen whether the new card will prove popular but the take-up of other payment cards in Singapore suggests it will do well. So it can be taken as a new example of what’s possible with political willpower and an open market. According to EZ-Link, besides being a public transport payment card, the Sino Pass will be accepted at over 100,000 shops and restaurants in both cities.
“This collaboration marks a great milestone for both companies, etching a path towards our vision for uninterrupted travel on public transportation, as well as retail and other payments across national borders,” said EZ-Link CEO Nicholas Lee when announcing the Sino Visitor Pass.
The aims of this joint initiative go beyond offering greater convenience for travellers. The payment card partnership has been aided by connections made by a Singapore-Guangdong Collaboration Council (SGCC), which is a governmental partnership targeting mutual benefits of economic growth.
According to reports from an SGCC meeting in August this year, Singapore companies are playing a major role in the economic transformation of Guangdong. In return, in 2012 alone, Singapore welcomed 266,000 tourists from the Chinese province and investment of around US$240 million from Chinese companies establishing a presence in Singapore.
Guangdong is focusing its regeneration efforts on three special economic zones in Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Companies from Singapore stand to benefit from opportunity to contribute to each zone’s development. The Sino Pass transportation card is being encouraged as a means to help it all happen.
The payment card market is buoyant in Singapore, with substantial associated wealth in consumer buying power. Since 2006, an open competitive market has been promoted by Singapore’s ‘contactless e-payment payment application standard’ (CEPAS) for smartcards. There are two main card suppliers, EZ-Link and NETS. Both are offering customers a choice of cards, benefits and topping-up options.
The majority of drivers using Singapore’s roads are able to take advantage of what’s on offer. All vehicles have to be fitted with an in-vehicle unit for communicating with the gantries of the city’s electronic road pricing and car parking systems. Both road charging and car parking payments can be made by a pre-registered credit card, or by having either a NETS CashCard or CEPAS compliant smartcard inserted in the in-vehicle unit.
According to NETS there are 6.5 million CashCards in circulation. In addition there are also NETS Flashpay and the EZ-Link cards which have traditionally been primarily a payment card for public transport in Singapore. However, since the introduction of ‘dual-mode’ IUs in 2008, drivers can now use EZ-Link cards to pay road and parking charges as well as purchases at retail and leisure outlets ranging from coffee shops to swimming pools.
Flashpay offers much the same, including metro and bus fares, road pricing and parking charges, and NETS says there are about 40,000 ‘acceptance points’ across Singapore.
Beyond the benefits for consumers of payment convenience and managing a single account for multiple purchases, it also serves to put road use charges into context as payment for a service. Furthermore, while neither NETS nor EZ-Link set the pricing for transportation, road use or parking in Singapore, the city’s smartcard market is demonstrating interoperability between public and private transport and will soon do so between two countries as well.
So what about elsewhere? Why is it just Singapore that has progressed so far with multimodal and now dual currency smartcards?
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of North America’s EZ-Pass electronic Toll collection system, which now operates across 25 Toll or transportation agencies in 15 states. Despite the maturity of EZ-Pass, it remains fundamentally a tag-based Toll system – applying to some airport parking but not across modes of transport or additional payment services on a significant scale.
Singapore’s advantage as a city with a single transportation agency – the Land Transport Authority – can be seen in comparison to the 25-strong EZ-Pass Interagency Group. Each member agency has its own interests to protect.
“It is disappointing that EZ-Pass has not expanded to apply to more modes and services, but it was surprising that the agencies in at the beginning signed off on the concept at all,” says transportation consultant Larry Yermack.
As chief finance officer of the then Tri-boro Port Authority, Yermack was instrumental in getting EZ-Pass up and running. Recently, he has been acting as a strategic advisor to
“Electronic Toll collection was a breakthrough for agencies because it identified their customers for the First time. In most cases transit customers are still anonymous. EZ-Pass was the First Toll collection initiative to extend across multiple Toll agencies, but at the time the focus was too much on the media, the tag or card to be used, while not enough attention was paid to the back office processing,” Yermack says.
“With recognition that these are merely financial transaction systems, the implication that the front end is not so crucial starts to open out. A single shared account system has a number of advantages and makes sense from the point of view of the customer who probably would rather not have a separate payment media for the car, ferry, bus and taxi.”
While EZ-Pass succeeded in persuading agencies to relinquish their autonomy, this still represents the main barrier to CROSS-agency multi-modal payment as individual operators do not want to lose control of how their transportation systems are managed. But the message from Cubic is that every operator can retain its own payment media and business rules – fares, offers or specific travel conditions – while sharing a common back office platform.
“Payment systems across multiple operators and modes are some way off but when talking to agencies we find that this is what they want in terms of financial accountability,” says Yermack. “Authorities currently cannot speak to all customers, but via shared payment systems they could be making universal offers in the form of incentives, to reduce traffic congestion for example.
According to recognised metrics if 5% of traffic can be encouraged off the roads, it usually means problem solved.”
In Singapore, the Land Transport Authority is setting the electronic road pricing charges dynamically to target optimal use of the city’s roads. The optimum is defined as road speeds between 20-30 km/hr except for expressways where the optimal range rises to 45-65 km/hr.
If speeds drop, indicating too many vehicles are on the road, ERP rates go up accordingly to encourage a shift in travel patterns. Conversely, if speeds go above the optimal range, the ERP rates are reduced.
In northern Europe, where city congestion charging is relatively prevalent, payment accounting systems are intentionally basic. In Gothenburg, for example – one of the most recent of cities to activate congesting charging – the charge collection is by means of camera recognition of license plates so not requiring an in-vehicle unit or payment card. According to environmental manager Anders Roth of the city’s traffic and public transport authority, Gothenburg is yet to combine road and parking charges. Bus cards are valid for some commuter parking places, however, and Gothenburg is testing a system where public transport, car-sharing, taxi and bike hire are linked through a single service.
It is perhaps the mooted European Electronic Tolling System (EETS) that carries most promise for pan-European Toll payment.
EETS is based on the European Commission’s interoperability directive. The aim is to deliver a pan-European Toll system through an EETS supplier, but the business case is yet to attract a service Provider with meaningful intent.
The First EETS type system is expected to be France’s écotax national truck Toll, if its gains final government approval. Two types of écotax account have been devised. Users can select to subscribe to an EETS account with billing post-journey, or non subscribers will register a pre-pay écotax account which must be credited to authorise the user to drive on French roads.
This way, by providing an EETS option, the écotax delivery and operation consortium
