The San Francisco Bay area transport system Bart is starting a four-month trial to allow riders to use a specially-equipped Sprint mobile phone to pay for rides and access platforms. The 230 trial participants will also be able to hold their phone up to Jack in the Box and Sprint 'smart advertisements' on Bart station walls and download directions to the nearest Jack in the Box restaurant or content from Sprint.

Participants can also use their mobile phone to pay for their meal in Jack in the Box reastaurants. Payments technology provider First Data supplies the required near field communication technology, while Vivotech has developed the NFC software for the mobile phones and the over-the-air card provisioning servers used in the trial.

“In BART’s case, a participant will initially have a stored value of USD 48 worth of BART rides loaded onto their NFC enabled mobile phone”, BART Director James Fang explains. “Once the stored value drops below USD 10 the NFC technology automatically reloads the phone ‘over the air’ with another USD 48 worth of rides and the customer will automatically receive our high-value discount, so they will only be charged USD 45”. “Additionally, participants can check their balance using their phones at any time.” Fang further mentioned.