Vancouver transit police anticipate higher fraud with smart card system
19 March, 2013
category: Contactless, Smart Cards
The Vancouver Transit police anticipates that it will see more cases of transit fraud once TransLink, the city’s public transportation system, introduces the Compass smart-card system in the fall, reports the Vancouver Sun.
TransLink believes that fraud with the new smart card system could be higher than the fraud it experiences with reselling fraudulent student passes, which currently costs the system around C$15 million annually.
The system has researched other major cities that have implemented contactless transit payment, including London, Sydney and Los Angeles, and has found that security features on the cards cannot eliminate fraud all together, and hackers are able to tap into smart card systems.
However, TransLink hopes the cards will cut back on the amount of counterfeit, resold passes and student passes that are fraudulently sold.
TransLink expects to issue between 600,000 and 800,000 Compass cards to replace monthly and daily passes, tickets and cash fares at SkyTrain and SeaBus.
Read more here.