Jay Clemens
Accenture has won a $184 million contract to upgrade fare collection systems for all of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (Metro) transportation services.
The company will work to consolidate Metro’s transit services and provide management consulting in mobility, analytics, customer service, payments, financial services, retail and marketing science in order to develop the system, Accenture said Wednesday.
“Consumers want to see new payment approaches that enable choice and are easy for them to adopt, whether it be contactless payment cards, mobile phone or even today’s SmarTrip card,†said Paul Loftus, a senior managing director at Accenture.
Richard Sarles, Metro general manager and CEO, said the agency aims to gain flexibility for accounts, offer reliability to riders and help customers use bank-issued payment cards, credit cards, ID cards or mobile phones to pay fares.
The new system will be built for passengers to continue using SmarTrip cards and opt for other payment methods such as credit cards, government identity cards and near field communications-enabled mobile devices.
Accenture will engineer the technology based on its commercially off-the-shelf software products that are designed with an open payment architecture.
Metro will test the new system across 10 rail stations, onboard 50 branded-route buses and in two parking lots for a pilot program later in 2014.
