Should open payment be implemented in Hong Kong's public transportation system?

Abstract

The open system (contactless technology) has been introduced for a few years, but in Hong Kong, its usage is limited to retail payment/ transactions, for instance, one can use his/her VISA Paywave, MasterCard Paypass in retail stores (Wellcome, Mannings, 7-11, Maxim Fastfood, KFC, etc.), yet the wide spread of the open payment system have not been propagated to public transportation payment use, a simple reason is perhaps that Hong Kong’s public transportation payment services is dominated by a contactless payment system (closed payment platform) using the Octopus card, which has been playing a leading role among international micro payment industry, hence may seemed no emerging need for another payment platform. The other reason is that unlike the usage in retail transactions (solely for payment), the development and implementation of an open payment in public transportation is considered to be in a brown field which is more complicated and require various resources, planning, co-ordination and negotiation among relevant parties. It may seem that there is no urgency for developing an open payment platform in the transportation sector at the moment, yet with recent technological advancement (contactless feature of bank cards for support of open contactless payment system), also changes of consumer preference on payment method (prepaid versus post-paid method), and being one of the first tier cities, Hong Kong should plan ahead for further improvement and development in their system (to international standard) to maintain its market leading position and to prevent the threat of falling behind among other major cities.