GCash, Visa, Mastercard eye PH fare system concession
GCash, Visa and Mastercard are among the 24 companies that have expressed interest in the government’s planned Philippine Automated Fare Collection System (PAFCS) concession, which the Department of Transportation (DOTr) plans to bid out by year-end.
According to a DOTr list seen by the Inquirer, firms including Siemens Mobility, Hitachi Asia, LG CNS and Cubic Transportation Systems participated in a market sounding held in Singapore last month for the proposed concession.
This project, which aims to unify fare payments across the country’s rail network, is moving toward procurement, with the government targeting Cabinet Committee approval by the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) by May.
Then, the DOTr aims to publish the bid documents by June and award the contract by the fourth quarter.
In an interview, acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez said that the government was pushing for a fully interoperable system that would connect major rail lines, including MRT 3, LRT 1, LRT 2 and eventually, the Metro Manila Subway.
“It must be interoperable, interconnected,” Lopez said in a roundtable with the Inquirer.
PAFCS would allow commuters to pay using a range of cashless options, including credit and debit cards, e-wallets and other digital payment platforms.
The proposal is currently under review by the DOTr’s planning committee following a submission by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to the Department of Economy, Planning and Development ICC.
ADB is advising the DOTr in the search for the PAFCS concessionaire.
The concessionaire would be responsible for the “development, operations and maintenance of the automatic fare collection system for all transport modes in the Philippines,” according to an agreement between the DOTr and ADB.
The planned concession builds on earlier efforts to modernize fare collection systems.
The DOTr has piloted automated fare collection initiatives across select transport segments, including MRT 3 and public utility vehicles, as part of a broader push toward cashless, integrated mobility.
In 2014, the AF Consortium, a group formed by companies from the Ayala and First Pacific groups, won the bid to replace the magnetic-based ticketing system with a contactless Automated Fare Collection System across Metro Manila’s rail network, covering LRT 1, LRT 2 and MRT 3.
