Just under a month before the expiry of the period required to register the SUBE card and thus avoid paying the “full fare” with the surcharge that will begin to apply to transport from April, and amidst long queues and complaints from users, the government is working with the private sector to be able to add other forms of payment while traveling.
While the financial system’s demand is for the government to “open up” the SUBE system, a Together for Change MP introduced a bill this week to remove the requirement for transport companies to charge for this system and allow “the universalization of payment methods”.
In parallel, the private sector collaborates with the government of the city of Buenos Aires to be able to do this undertake a “pilot test” and include other forms of payment in the subways. “The Ministry of Infrastructure is constantly analyzing improvements to mobility for the benefit of citizens. One of these is the payment of the public transport service. Even if in the country SUBE is the method accepted in almost all provinces, given that the Municipality is analyzing new payment methods”, they said in the Buenos Aires offices.
The bill
The proposal of Damiano Arabia is that “tall means of public transport by car, bicycle, surface and subway railways, passenger rivers and cable cars“adopt the NFC technology to allow payment with credit, debit and prepaid cards. In short, the Saudi initiative is to “add” new payment methods to the one already established and adopted since 2009.
“I started working on this proposal long before the problems with SUBE were put on the table. The idea was to take aA concept already used in much of the worldor where you can pay for different transport services with NFC technology,” Arabia said in dialogue with Clarín, where he also underlined that the current SUBE system “is monopolistic”.
“It is a closed system, controlled by Nación Servicios, and it is a very opaque box. For example, no one talks about the commissions that SUBE charges transport companies, which are 7% for each trip made,” the lawmaker said. . “With this proposal, the fees currently applied for credit or debit card payments, which are 1.6% and 0.8% respectively, could be eliminated. Even in areas with high traffic of people, these could be even lower” he assured.
Saudi Arabia has cited the lack of new credentials as one reason for the need to expand this system. “Plastic is missing, it cannot be found. Furthermore, this is bad for incoming tourism, since visitors to Argentine cities are obliged to obtain this card in order to travel on public transport,” he said.
In addition to presenting this project for subsequent discussion in congressional committees, Arabia held meetings with officials from several departments of the executive branch, as well as with companies and private sector players.
In the private sector, in fact, talks have been underway for some time, with this Government and the previous one, to be able to “expand” the payment possibilities of the system.
The points that are negotiated
“The talks are very advanced”, they said in a very important payment systems company at a local level and they assured that both from a technical and economic point of view there are no major obstacles to proceed towards this integration. “This is more of a political decision,” they said.
The financial system’s proposal is in line with what Saudi is proposing: exploit the NFC (Near Field Communication) technology used by SUBE and present in most plastics contactless that banks and fintechs offer to their customers, to allow them to debit directly with these cards.
According to VISA data, 85% of the plastics that the brand has active in the country have contactless technology.
To be able to pay with any card in the payment terminals of subways, trains and buses requires an investment that could be made by the private sector, through a UTE (Temporary Union of Companies).
There are several technical problems that are not minor when thinking about other payment methods. On the one hand, the SUBE card allows the segmentation of tariffs based on the user’s profile. But it also allows you to benefit from a discount for users who use multiple means of transport in the AMBA.
The issue is analyzed by the Ministry of Economy, responsible for the former Transport portfolio reduced to secretariat in the current administration. And also by the Central Bank, since it is responsible for regulating means of payment. Sources from the monetary authority confirmed to this newspaper that “work is being done on this issue” without providing further details.
The “pilot tests”
The idea, both of the ruling party and the private sector, is to imitate a model already present in various cities around the world. A few weeks ago, the possibility of contactless payment was activated in the Santiago de Chile metro.
Other pilot tests of alternative systems to SUBE are also underway in Argentina. Last year, in the city of Paraná, Banco Nación together with Mastercad launched “SUBE Débito”, a card on which you could load money both to pay for transport and to make purchases in stores.
In the city of Buenos Aires, the possibility of charging via QR code has recently been incorporated. For a few months now, the self-service terminals in metro stations have allowed you to load the SUBE card with a QR code, through various virtual wallets.
Source: Clarin
