Users Reload NFC Phones 800 Times In Transit-Fare Test

Published October 06, 2008, 1:00 a.m. EDT

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Updated October 06, 2008, 12:00 a.m. EDT

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Nearly 200 San Francisco transit riders reloaded their NFC phones 800 times in a recent four-month test, says Santa Clara, Calif.-based Near Field Communications provider Vivotech. The riders took nearly 9,000 trips during the trial between January and May. Participants reloaded their Bay Area Rapid Transit card balances using Sprint NFC phones embedded with NFC microchips (CardLine, 1/29). Commuters could use the phones to pay for their rides on BART trains by touching them to card readers at entrance gates. Commuters also could hold their phones up to special advertisements also embedded with NFC chips inside BART stations to download directions to Jack in the Box restaurants or Sprint special content to their mobile phones. Vivotech says users tapped the ads "several hundred times." At Jack in the Box restaurants, commuters could use their phones to pay for meals.

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