Bank card can now be used to buy tickets from ticket machines
In addition to your Elron farecard, you can now also use a bank card to pay for tickets when you buy from ticket machines. The bank card must be activated for contactless payments and, in the event that you buy tickets for several people, the total amount charged may not exceed 25 euros.
‘We are very happy that payment cards can now be used to buy tickets from ticket machines on board any Elron train service,’ announced Ronnie Kongo, head of sales and development at Elron. ‘The introduction of card payments has been quite challenging. For example, the requirements for the machines changed during the process, so we pretty much had to start the entire process over from scratch.’
Any tickets which are purchased from a ticket machine will cost 10% less than those purchased from a customer attendant. The ticket must be purchased immediately after you board the train. In order to use the ticket machine, the payment card must be activated for contactless payments, and the total amount paid for the tickets may not exceed 25 euros. ‘If a customer wishes to buy several tickets and the total amount exceeds 25 euros, the machine will decline the transaction,’ specified Kongo, adding that it is also not possible to use a payment card with the ticket machines which is also an ISIC student card. ‘ISIC cards also function as Ühiskaart travel cards, which allow residents of Tallinn to use public transport in Tallinn free of charge, for example. As the system cannot tell whether it should treat the card as a payment card or as an Ühiskaart in this specific case, these cards cannot be used for card payments on ticket machines. The same applies to public transport in the city of Tallinn. Despite this, anyone who holds an ISIC payment card will still be able to purchase their tickets from customer attendants.’
If a customer has used a payment card to pay via a ticket machine, they must present the same card to the customer attendant to prove that they have purchased a ticket. If a card is used which has been uploaded to a smartphone instead of remaining a physical card, the last four digits of the electronic card in the application being used must be presented to the customer attendant. ‘The number on a card which has been used to make a phone payment differs from the number which is displayed on a physical card. Such numbers are referred to differently in different applications, such as the Swedbank app, Google Pay, or Apple Wallet. The number may be referred to as the digital card number, the virtual card number, or the device account number. In order to ensure a smooth ticket inspection process, we would like to ask all customers who are planning to use phone payments to read the instructions carefully in advance in terms of finding their electronic card numbers in commonly-used applications, if they are unsure about any part of the process. The instructions are available on Elron’s website.’
’This is another important milestone. We are happy to be the technological partner for Elron and work together to bring new customer-friendly solutions to the passengers. Enabling contactless bank card payments on trains makes it convenient and easy to buy tickets directly at the validator, thus supporting a positive customer experience,’ said Ado Are, project manager of Ridango, the ticketing system provider.
