Citylink buses tap beep cards

By Louella Desiderio (The Philippine Star) Updated March 24, 2017 – 12:00am http://www.philstar.com/business/2017/03/24/1683930/citylink-buses-tap-beep-cards MANILA, Philippines –  Citylink buses plying the Newport City to Eastwood City route and vice-versa are now accepting the beep card as payment for distance-based fare, AF Payments Inc. (AFPI) said. “We have added another reason for Filipinos to own and enjoy their beep card.  Citylink is the first bus company to have an automated fare collection system that computes for distance-based fare. We’ll be implementing this scheme in most of our upcoming bus partnerships,” AFPI spokesperson Tere Ancheta said yesterday. To use the smart card for payment, passengers would need to tap their beep card twice or when they get on the bus and before alighting. Citylink’s buses use the global positioning system (GPS) to determine the precise station a passenger gets in and alights. Passengers have to make sure the beep card has the minimum required load for the fare. For the Newport City to Eastwood City route, the fare costs P39. Citylink’s buses are operational from Mondays to Saturdays, with the first trip departing at 6 a.m. “We are very excited to roll out this new system to our Citylink buses. With this breakthrough innovation, we hope to serve more people going to and from our townships,” Arnie Batac, head of estate management at Megaworld said. AFPI, the consortium of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and Ayala Corp., launched the beep card in 2015 after it was awarded the contactless payments solutions project under the government’s public-private partnership program. The beep card is a reloadable contactless card currently accepted as payment for Lines 1 and 2 of the Light Rail Transit, Metro Rail Transit Line 3, Manila-Cavite Toll Expressway, select bus lines, as well as FamilyMart outlets. Users of the beep card can reload the card up to P10,000. Apart from the train stations, users can reload the beep card at FamilyMart, Bayad Center, SM Bills Payment, Villarica and Tambunting outlets.