Welp, it looks like your Opal card’s days are numbered.
For the first time in Australia, you can now use your Mastercard to tap on to a public transport network, assuming you catch the F1 Manly to Circular Quay ferry. Hell yeah!
International Mastercards will work too, which is bloody excellent news if you’re a tourist.
According to Doug Howe, vice president of enterprise partnerships at Mastercard, 82 percent of Aussies are making payments with tap-and-go technology each week. Implementing the same system to public transport “just makes good sense,” he said.
The company are currently working with more than 100 cities all over the world to introduce similar contactless or mobile payment systems to public transport networks.
So how long until you can ditch your Opal card? Hard to say at this stage, but trials for contactless payments across the Opal network began in August last year, so we can’t be too far off.
The Sydney bloke that just had an Opal card implanted in his hand must be bloody spewin’. Not that they’ll be stopping Opal use, it’ll still be sold alongside contactless payments, I just wanted to point out that someone had an Opal card implanted in their fucking hand. Haha, fuck that.
Photo: Supplied.
