No more fumbling around with EZ-Link cards; starting today you can simply tap your phones at gantries to pay for your rides on public transport.
The various telcos will be offering their customers the new Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled SIM cards that allows compatible mobile phones (mostly Androids, soz iPhone users) to pay for MRT, LRT and bus rides. Beyond just public transport, folks with the capability can also use their phones for payments at over 30,000 EZ-Link acceptance points island-wide, including retail, food & beverage outlets and taxis.
With an EZ-Link NFC SIM and an approved NFC-enabled mobile handset, you can now tap your Android phone* for payments on…
Posted by EZ-Link on Monday, 28 March 2016
Such convenience however will require you to jump through some hoops first though. Various telcos charge different prices to switch their current SIM cards to the NFC SIM (details should be available on their websites) and customers will have to turn on the NFC function and download the EZ-Link app to make payments.
Even so, only 19 models of mobile phones have been confirmed for usage with the new NFC SIM, and its a small list limited to LG, Samsung and Sony devices. Understandably, iPhones too are NFC-enabled — but payments are only limited to Apple Pay, and that feature’s definitely not gonna see mainstream usage here anytime soon.
More details available on the EZ-Link NFC website.
