Heads up, commuters: You may now pay for your BGC bus fares via Mastercard

Commuters may now pay for their bus fares in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) in Taguig using their Mastercard.

According to a BusinessWorld report, Mastercard Philippines Country Manager Simon Javier Calasanz announced that credit, debit, and prepaid cards can now be used for bus rides in the area. "It is the first international payment network to enable tap-and-go payment options in public transport in Metro Manila,” Calasanz said in a press briefing on Nov. 21.

Mastercard has partnered with AF Payments Inc. (AFPI), which created the stored-value Beep cards that are being used at the moment, for a contactless payment scheme in a bid to reduce long lines during peak hours and make things more convenient even without tickets and cash.

The contactless scheme in BGC buses is the first phase of their partnership, as EDSA buses and MRT-3 are also about to have it soon.

“That’s just the start,” AFPI President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Juan Moreno said. “We need to show (it’s manageable) because BGC is a self-contained entity. Then we go for a bus system as extensive as EDSA and then we’ll try rail.”

To date, half of the 11 million Beep cards that have been issued remain active.

Moreno said there might be a need to adjust Beep card transaction fees as its agreement with the government to provide free services ends next year.

“We, in fact, pay the government to provide the service for free,” he said, adding that they're looking at how to fairly price the services moving forward.

“As I said, even if this is a public good, it’s undertaken by a private entity like ourselves," he said. "We have to have a sustainable economic model to make this go on.”

Moreno said they're also getting regulatory approval to upgrade the chips used in Beep cards.

The upgraded chip is meant to be more secure and will use more advanced technology yet it won't cost more, according to Moreno.

The Mastercard and AFPI partnership was in line with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap 2020-2023, which aims to digitize half of all the transactions in the country.

The Department of Transportation, meanwhile, is seeking a unified fare collection system via debit/credit cards for all public utility vehicles, including jeepneys.