Examine the Where you can ride transit using Apple Pay support page and you’ll notice that some listed entries have an ‘*Express Mode supported’ tag and some don’t. There is a simple rule at play: all native transit cards (Suica, Clipper, Navigo, etc.) support Express Mode. However, EMV payment cards don’t always have Express Mode support. It depends on the system. And if you really look carefully you will notice that none of the entries have Express Mode support for both native transit cards and payment cards. Until now.
Chicago Ventra for example. Apple Pay Ventra cards have Express Mode, but Apple Pay payment cards do not. The problem here is that the Apple Pay Ventra digital card is EMV and Apple Pay payment cards are EMV. In short the current state of Ventra gate reader infrastructure isn’t up to the task of separating different EMV cards. In theory a well designed NFC reader system should be able to choose, poll, the right card on the device. But the reality is that something goes wrong in the NFC polling step between devices with the gate coughing up a card clash error. This is why Apple requires Apple Enhanced Contactless Polling compliant gate readers for EMV open loop Apple Wallet Express Mode certification.
The Presto system added Apple Pay EMV Express Mode, real Express Mode not fake, in February 2024 after upgrading their gate readers. A bigger surprise came when Apple Pay Presto launched.
Presto is the very first system that offers both open and closed loop Express Mode card support in Apple Wallet. They can do this because they kept MIFARE in place for digital wallets. It the best of both open and closed loop. Casual users can use EMV payment cards, heavy users can use MIFARE transit cards with the extra services they need. Cubic has tried flogging a do everything with EMV strategy for open loop and closed loop, but EMV closed loop has been problematic, especially on digital. Presto has proved that closed loop MIFARE + open loop EMV can work on digital wallet Express Mode. But the fact remains that as of Early 2026, there isn’t an EMV only fare system that supports closed loop + open loop Express Mode.
As indicated in the chart, Oyster card is still plastic only with no digital equivalent, all public mention of an OMNY app and digital card for Wallet disappeared shortly after the OMNY plastic card launch with no return in sight. Transport for NSW “successfully” beta tested a EMV digital Opal card for Apple Wallet in 2021, with another round of testing in 2023, but nothing came of it after the test silently ended in July 2023. EMV Express Mode is likely not in the works for Clipper open loop until they finish upgrading their gate reader hardware. Is gate reader infrastructure really so important? Yes.
Some people say that transit operators have the ability to switch on Apple Wallet EMV Express Mode, but I don’t think so. Apple most certainly has a certification process to make sure gate reader infrastructure is up to par before they agree to put the ‘Express Mode supported’ tag on their support page. I suspect the certification process involves Apple Enhanced Contactless Protocol (ECP) for efficient automatic NFC polling. ECP has to be supported in NFC reader chip hardware, so getting transit operators on board with ECP takes time which is why it can sometimes take years between an open loop service rollout and Apple Wallet EMV Express Mode support.
Even with the ECP upgraded Presto reader hardware, I’ll be very interested in how the gate performance pans out. MIFARE and EMV both use NFC A but there’s always a small hit when protocol switching is involved and open loop is always adds some system overhead than closed loop. Japanese open loop installations simply use different readers, one for Transit IC, one for EMV, one for QR. Not elegant to look at but at least each protocol can achieve optimum performance. And thanks to ECP Apple Pay users can have both a payment card and a Presto card in Wallet set for Express Mode and get through the gate without ‘card clash’: the NFC gate reader uses the MIFARE Presto card as default and ignores the EMV payment card. In short it all works as it should, people use the card they want for payment and the system takes care of it.
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