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Metrolinx: Presto Fare Card

I just had a thought.

This is from the website:

Why am I being redirected to an external site?
When providing your credit card information for Autoload/Requested Reload, you will be automatically redirected to an external site, hosted by Moneris. Moneris pages are secure pages which serve to process credit card and banking transactions, serving as “vaults†for the transaction process. Once the transaction is approved, Moneris provides PRESTO with confirmation that the transaction has been successfully registered. At that point, you are automatically redirected back to the PRESTO website. Your information is not being shared with any 3rd parties.
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It seems Moneris handles their payment processing for their website. Perhaps Moneris only sends a file to Presto with updated payment information once per day, probably overnight. This would explain why if you go to the customer service booth, your card value is updated immediately.
 
Yes, you're right, but this is how any credit card transaction works - when you initiate a purchase, the merchant doesn't receive the money right away, they only receive it when their accounts are settled at the end of the day. However, this doesn't stop a merchant from providing immediately to you the good or service you requested - they will definitely receive the money.
 
chriskayTO said:
I agree this is very confusing. I'm a technologically savvy guy (and work for a bank) so I understand the ins and outs of payment processing, however there's no reason they have to make this so complicated for the average user.

As for the "requested reload", I believe the 5 business days is only a maximum limit and would only be needed for pre-authorized debits from bank accounts, but for credit cards should happen within the 24 hour timeframe, which is the same for ad hoc reloads. Keep in mind I'm just idly speculating here and don't know if that is, in fact, gospel.
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Hate to sound like a broken record but Tim Horton's (who deal in the complicated world of coffee and donuts) manage to auto reload my card every monday morning, before I wake up to start my work week. I have access to that at any of their thousands of locations as soon as I am up, washed, teeth brushed and dressed for the day.

Surely if a coffee house has this figured out we could expect to be able to learn from their sophisticated tech world.

I ordered my card, it is on the way.....but I am not going to put a dime into this card (beyond the mandatory $10) until they sort this out.....think about it, we are reading the story of someone who took advantage of their online reload using a credit card and, in this day and age, he is being told 48 hours later to go down to Union Station and tap his card against a device so that he can then access the money he has already sent to them?

If I were them, and I am serious, I would just shut the thing down until they got it right.....the damage in the public eyes that this "learn as we go" approach (what was the pilot for anyway) is very difficult to measure and even more difficult to repair (don't forget, the audience here is, generally more aware and transit friendly than the public at large......try and think like you had never found this board when wondering about the damage things like this might be doing).
 
TOareaFan said:
If I were them, and I am serious, I would just shut the thing down until they got it right.....the damage in the public eyes that this "learn as we go" approach (what was the pilot for anyway) is very difficult to measure and even more difficult to repair (don't forget, the audience here is, generally more aware and transit friendly than the public at large......try and think like you had never found this board when wondering about the damage things like this might be doing).
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From what I have heard so far, this problem only exists for Toronto residents. The pilot was successful. The problem is with the TTC readers only.

I too had a problem the first time I used my card. I had to tap it at Union GO, which I did... but I realized I had tapped the fare reader, not balance checker. I tried to press cancel but nothing happened. I was in a hurry and decided to just suck it up for the time being and tapped onto the TTC. The machines at Union GO are so hard to find seeing as everything GO related is green (same colour as Presto). To make matters worse, directional signage for Presto had been moved and was being used to hold up caution tape for a leak that sprung in the ceiling.

When I got home, I checked my balance and noticed that GO Fare had been deducted from my account. I obviously did not take the GO since I tapped onto the TTC almost immediately after tapping the GO reader. I emailed Presto about the situation and have yet to hear back.
 
Even though I live in downtown Toronto I ordered a card since the stations that have readers are the ones I use most.

I knew about the validation problem, but I first used my card this morning at College Stn and it worked fine.
 
Tuscani01 said:
When I got home, I checked my balance and noticed that GO Fare had been deducted from my account. I obviously did not take the GO since I tapped onto the TTC almost immediately after tapping the GO reader. I emailed Presto about the situation and have yet to hear back.
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Oh Tuscani... We both know exactly why this happened :p. Fortunately the fact that there is a paper trail of your travels will work in your favour.
 
Tuscani01 said:
From what I have heard so far, this problem only exists for Toronto residents. The pilot was successful. The problem is with the TTC readers only.
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How is the fact that an online purchase using a credit card not showing up in the customer's balance for over 48 hours specific to Toronto residents/customers? Did I miss something?
 
I passed a PRESTO information booth in Union Station the other day. It had three people, working it, all friendly.
One of the staff asked me if I was interested in getting a card, so I showed him I already had one.
He was happy at this, not because I was already in the program, but because he needed someone to explain the registration process to him as no one there had been trained on it.
 
Jonny5 said:
I passed a PRESTO information booth in Union Station the other day. It had three people, working it, all friendly.
One of the staff asked me if I was interested in getting a card, so I showed him I already had one.
He was happy at this, not because I was already in the program, but because he needed someone to explain the registration process to him as no one there had been trained on it.
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That's such an inspirational story....
 
TOareaFan said:
Went today to buy a new one as I used the last ticket a couple of weeks ago. The price when I last bougth was $58 (so $5.80 a trip + a GO fare).....new price (and I don't know how long that has been in play) $91. So using VIA from Brampton to Toronto now costs $9.10 + $6.38 (assume 10 ride pass) = $15.48.

I am not a particularly price sensitive person....but that exceeds even what I would pay for the flexibility.

Just an example, I guess, of how far we have to go on fare/service integration.
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hwy7 said:
I just bought a new one last week, and I, too, was annoyed by the price hike (and the HST, but that's another story). But you know what annoyed me even more? GO/VIA Paks now expire after a year.
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Not to bring up this sore point again but here goes. Was just on the VIA web page looking for information about travel during the G20 and I stumbled (well, wandered) over the via/go pak page....wanted to see how they positioned the new pricing and was quite stunned by the relationship between the Brampton and Georgetown pricing and the aldershot and Oakville pricing. Seems these things are priced so that the further you travel, the cheaper they are!

Oakville Georgetown Brampton Aldershot Oshawa
$83.75 $72.75 $81.75 $69.75 $98.25
 
They are priced as the diffence between a GO Transit fare and a VIA rail fare. As VIA's fares are flat rate per distance and GO's are varied per distance, the more you pay for your GO tickets, the less you pay for your VIA pak.
 
For the past 16 months TTC has been studying how to use credit cards to pay fares. It's $80000/month.
I hope the study wont conclude that it's impossible to use them :D

The Toronto Star article
TTC hires credit-card fare consultant
New York expert will look at how Toronto could move to open payment

Tess Kalinowski
Transportation Reporter


The TTC is hiring a New York consultant to develop a business case for a system that would let riders to tap a credit card on an electronic reader instead of dropping a token in a box.

The $1.3 million contract has been awarded to KMA Group, operated by Paul Korczak, who has worked with the New York and Chicago transit systems. He spoke in Toronto at the TTC’s invitation in April.

Korczak has been studying the TTC’s fare system and the provincial Presto fare card for the past 16 months, according to a report to city councillors.

The advantage of an open payment system is that it is managed by the credit card companies so the transit system doesn’t have to handle money, says Korczak.

TTC chair Adam Giambrone has said that such a system could work in conjunction with the Presto smartcard being adopted by other transit systems in the Toronto region and, to a limited extent, by the TTC.

Contactless credit cards are increasingly popular among retailers of smaller purchases such as coffee and gas. They allow the vendor to bundle transactions and avoid onerous fees.
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