It’s been an interesting week reading the negative reactions of Singapore transit users to the new SimplyGo EZ-Link. Social media was full of complaints that basically boiled down to: we could have had a Suica, but now we have a buggy app with slow gate taps that don’t give us card balance feedback.
Deeper down there was a sense of loss of what could have been. Despite all the promises of the home grown CEPAS NFC standard, the mobile and eMoney sides of the EZ-Link equation never panned out. From June 1 the entire LTA system will switch to SimplyGo centralized account based/EMV open loop fare processing. Current EZ-Link and Nets FlashPay card users have to upgrade their plastic to SimplyGo EZ-Link cards.
And if you want to go mobile? Go open loop and use your credit cards in Apple Pay/Google Pay. Forget all that other stuff, you don’t need it. It’s dead. And that’s what hurts most.
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