Well well well, what have we got here?
I saw this gadget at the Shaw Blvd station of the MRT last Saturday. Looks familiar!
I’ve written about this before in my first Edong’s Dream (mobile phone entry to MRT stations) and when a mobile phone MRT ticket prototype came out in June 2005.
The gadget is an upgrade of a contact less smart card MRT ticket sensor. The contact less smart card needs to be swiped/tapped on the sensor for the MRT gate to be opened. The smart card doesn’t need to touch the sensor. Just bring the smart card close to the sensor (around 1-3 inches) and the sensor will detect the card.
The smart card is designed to be installed inside the cellphone of commuters. It will be small and thin, just enough to be slipped inside the casing of most phones, in between the battery and the phone. It has nothing to do with Bluetooth, IR or RFID.
The smart card has nothing to do with m-commerce in the strict sense. It’s to be put in the phone only because the phone is one “standard” that most people carry around. The smart card will be pre-paid. To be loaded up with another machine, hopefully automated too (like a ticket vendo).
After almost a year after I saw the prototype, it looks like the MRT is still in testing stage for this new ticketing system. (No banner announcements of it’s official launch in the station). It’s progress, considering that they continue to work on a hardware upgrade.
Goodluck to the MRT and the supplier of this smart card ticketing. Hope it reduces the looooooonnnng lines at the MRT stations.
Related links: Smart Cards, RFID, Smart Cards
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I see this all the time since I ride at Shaw.
Is this why stored value cards are always unavailable?
I think the unavailability of stored value cards was because of some printing problem. lousy. hassle
looks like they’re implementing the wireless project across the entire MRT. I’ve seen the sensors in other stations (Ortigas and GMA)
saw it in Ayala station…
the stored value card was unavailable for some time because gma ordered the mrt management to recall all value cards with erap photos on it. nagselos eh. yan tuloy public ang naghirap…
Hi matanglawin,
I don’t agree.
I think it was a logistics, supply chain mistake by LRTAdminstration. If they were able to supply (for example) double the number to tickets that they cancelled (those erap tickets), there wouldn’t be a problem, right?
Nevertheless, it still remains an un-resolved issue because they still have ticket shortages every so often.
and yes, agree, public ang naghihirap dahil sa kanilang kakulangan.
ka edong
wow! finally, they have thought of a way in solving the looooong queue at the mrt. it will be a great help to us commuters should it materialized. hmmm…i wonder if the testing stage is over. is it operational now ka_eds?
hi ysa,
Opo, gumagana na. Heto po: G-Pass for the MRT
“It has nothing to do with Bluetooth, IR or RFID.”
It is RFID technology.
hi!
Wow, this is great! But observed that your post and replies are already a year or 2years old already, how come our mrt still have long lines?
hehehe!
BTW, RFID is not the right technology to be implemented in transportation kind of solution. Contactless Smart Card & RFID, yes they have the same technical usage concept, but are different in implementation.
RFID have longer range of RF, so it might read by other machines that can deduct twice, thrice of your load, hehehe! 
Yeah, people usually get confused about it, between the 2, there are really other technical differences actually… 
RFID is more used as a parallel solution with Barcode Technology rather than smart cards.
Anyway, grabe, 2years… Or is it that MRT doesn’t have enough capital for the project? Or they put it on hold since government will buy them in the near future?
LRT2 was able to implement the Auto-ticketing vendor machine, why mrt wasn’t able to do it?
Right. You know the technologies well, Winston
Maybe there’s a different budget for the MRT and the LRT2. I’m sure there’s also a different administrator.
I believe there were pilot tests for contact-less smart cards for LRT2. I don’t ride LRT2 so I don’t know if they use it now.
Also, the technologies available at the time the MRT was built circa1999/2000
was different from the technologies available to the LRT2 circa 2004/2005.
Auto-ticketing vendo machine — Hahaha … MRT has some of that too! di nga lang gumagana (pero naka-on pa rin yun, ha).
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