Passengers on New York’s subway and bus services have now tapped their contactless bank card, smartphone or wearable device to pay fares using the Omny open loop fare payment system more than 100m times since its launch in May 2019, double the total of 50m the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) reported in March this year.

“The figure marks an additional 25m Omny payments in the last two months alone,” the MTA says, adding that “in recent weeks the system has recorded more than 600,000 taps a day”. 

“The nearly 17m Omny taps in June nearly tripled the number of taps from January (6.1m),” the transport authority says.

“Customers from 153 countries have now paid their fare using Omny.

“Nearly 80% of Omny taps came on the subway, the other fifth of taps largely coming on buses, and a remaining fraction on Staten Island Railway.”

Announcing the figures, MTA’s Wayne Lydon said that the authority remains “relentlessly focused on the next phases of this project, which includes the introduction of an Omny card, so we can bring Omny to all of our customers”.

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