Senior citizens, PWDs to register for discounted ‘tap and go’ cards

MANILA, Philippines – Senior citizens and persons with disabilities (PWDs) will need to apply, register, and wait for a few days to claim their discounted ‘tap and go’ cards for Metro Manila’s 3 main mass transit railways.

Although he could not say how long senior citizens and PWDs will have to wait, AF Payments Incorporated (AFPI) COO Peter Maher said, “It will take us a few days to bring them the cards, because they need to be registered on the system.”

“It’s a slightly different card, so it will be readily identified by LRTA (Light Rail Transit Authority) staff to ensure that the right people are using the right card,” he said on the sidelines of a media briefing on Friday, August 7.

In the meantime, those who are qualified for a 20% discount can still use their old magnetic cards on LRT line 1 (LRT1), LRT Line 2, or Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT3), LRTA spokesperson Hernando Cabrera told reporters.

“They can still use the old magnetic cards in some LRT1 stations, LRT2, and MRT3,” he said, adding that he will “announce which stations in due time.”

Starting Saturday, August 8, old magnetic cards will no longer be sold at the stations of the LRT1.

Those who still have the magnetic stored value tickets can refund the remaining value of their cards in all LRT1 stations from August 8 to 15.

“But if you can’t make it to the August 15 cut-off, we can have your old magnetic cards replaced with the new ones starting August 16,” Cabrera said.

The LRTA said the decommissioning of the current magnetic system is needed to start the installation of new gates on the northbound direction of the LRT1.

This comes as the LRTA and AFPI held their public testing of the new tap-and-go ticketing scheme in stations of the LRT2.

The pilot testing of the new system, which uses contactless beep cards, began on July 20 at the Legarda station of LRT2. As of August 5, the trial run has since been expanded to all LRT2 stations.

About 67,000 beep cards have been sold over the last 18 days, AFPI said.

“We’re fine, as you can see, people are going in and out freely. There is nothing else for us to do except practice in terms of how to deal with transactions that do not go into plan. But the LRTA is already doing that,” Maher told rerporters.

AFPI is the consortium of Ayala Corporation and Metro Pacific Investments Corporation.

The consortium is supplying and installing a total of 731 gates, 138 ticket vending machines, 221 point of sale devices, and 44 station computers across the 3 rail lines.