Rapid KL and PayNet are set to conduct a trial on the usage of debit cards for payment at LRT stations soon. This is due to the appearance of MyDebit card readers at selected LRT stations.
The existence of the reader was first noted by Twitter user orangsalji83 who noticed it at the Wangsa Maju LRT station yesterday. We had then personally visited the location as well as two more stations including Lembah Subang and Pasar Seni earlier today to check out the implementations ourselves.
Perasan benda ni kat LRT Wangsa Maju tadi. RapidKL pun dah boleh buat direct payment guna kad ATM. Touch n Go pulak nak tunggu tahun 3030 baru boleh topup online agaknya. pic.twitter.com/YJhGyTwu7Z
— snowman (@orangsalji83) September 22, 2020
Made by Coherent+, we believe that these readers are the Jellies-X3 which has been certified for MyDebit usages as well as AMEX, Mastercard PayPass, and Visa PayWave. Based on the network status icon shown on the upper left side of their screen, we don’t think they are connected to any actual backend or payment system at the moment.
Hence, we believe that could be the reason why our Maybank Visa debit card was not accepted for payment when we visited the machines earlier today:
We also noticed that the machine would show a slightly different error message when we tap our RHB Visa credit card on it. Hence, we believe that these machines have been set to solely accept MyDebit cards, as per the labels that have been plastered on the entry and exit gates:
The same error message also appeared when we tried Samsung Pay on the machines with a Samsung Galaxy Fold2, even though we chose the Maybank Visa debit card for payment:
Out of curiosity, we did reach out to Samsung Malaysia and asked if it will participate in the Rapid KL MyDebit LRT trial. Unfortunately, the company stated that it is not part of the trial which we believe is a missed opportunity for all parties including Rapid KL and MyDebit.
At this moment, the information regarding the RapidKL MyDebit LRT trial is rather scarce though. We were told by a customer service personnel this morning via Messenger that the test period for MyDebit payment has not yet been set in stone but the personnel also stated that an official announcement will be made once passengers are able to utilise MyDebit for their LRT rides.
We have also reached out to PayNet for additional clarifications as well but have yet to receive any response from the company at the time this article was published. Well, we will keep you updated once we receive more details from related parties.
Nevertheless, it is great to see that Rapid KL is keen to adopt another contactless payment method aside from Touch ‘n Go and same goes to PayNet for its interest in expanding MyDebit’s reach into public transportation services. It is really about time for both of these companies to embark on such endeavours anyway.
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