Singapore Land Transport Authority owned EZ-Link, has just launched an app called My EZ Link, which turns your smartphone into a mobile machine that tops up the value of your EZ-link card.
The news is first reported by Singapore’s main news site Straits Times.
Established in 2001, the EZ-Link card is a contactless smart card used for the payment of public transportation fares in Singapore, with limited use in the small payments retail sector.
Here’s how the new app looks like:
What can you do with the new EZ Link mobile app? It automates payment by charging to a user-designated Visa and MasterCard debit or credit card. Users must first enter personal and payment details into the app before they can tap their EZ-Link card on the smartphone to top up.
With this, there will be no need for commuters to visit ATMs or EZ-Link machines anymore when they want to top up their EZ Link cards. The smartphone payment option adds to existing fuss-free Giro and automatic stored-value reload options tied to the POSB ATM card and most credit cards.
There’s a catch though: The app only works on smartphones that are near field communications (NFC) enabled. NFC is a wireless transmission technology that allows mobile payment. For iPhone users, this means bad news for you because all iPhones are not NFC enabled.
Wondering if your device are NFC enabled?enablejsapi=1&html5=1& For Android devices, these are the NFC enabled smartphone models that are compatible with My EZ-Link Mobile App:
- Samsung Galaxy Ace 3
- Samsung Galaxy Express
- Samsung Galaxy S3
- Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE
- Samsung Galaxy Note 2 LTE
- Samsung Galaxy S4 GT-I9505
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra
- Sony Xperia Z
- LG G2
- LG Optimus G Pro
With My EZ-Link Mobile, you can manage up to 10 ez-link cards and perform functions like top ups, viewing of card details and viewing of card transaction history. The app charges a convenience fee of S$0.30 per top up. However, for MasterCard cardholders, the convenience fee has been waived from now until 31 May 2014 so you can enjoy topping up your ez-link cards for free!
You can download the Android app here.
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