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Tap and go: The future of urban mobility
00:28:18
In this episode of “Local to global: The power of small business,” host JJ Ramberg sits down with Chapin Flynn, Senior Vice President of Transit and Urban Mobility at Mastercard, and Mark Langmead, Director of Revenue & Compass Operations at TransLink in Vancouver, to explore how cities are making transit easier, faster, and more seamless for riders–an approach known as frictionless urban mobility.
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Foreign.
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I'm JJ Ramberg and this is local to Global the Power of Small Business, a podcast from GZero Media's Blue Circle Studios, produced in partnership with Mastercard. So far in this series, we've covered the outsized role small businesses play in fueling economies. We've talked about how the global middle class is set to grow dramatically in the coming decades and how their increased spending power is driving major shifts that ripple through economies. In our last episode, we looked at one of those shifts, the rise of the circular economy and how consumers are rethinking what they buy. Today, we're going to do a deep dive into the massive transformations happening in how we move through our cities and towns. As populations grow and new communities emerge, transportation systems and urban infrastructure are being pushed to keep up. And that's where the story gets really interesting for small businesses, because transportation and mobility touch every aspect of our lives and improving them, even incrementally, can have huge impacts on individuals, on businesses and the economy as a whole. In the United States, there are so called transit deserts, areas with little or no access to public transportation. Many of the lowest income households across the country spend nearly 20% of their income on automotive fuel alone. But better access to transit could shift some of that spending back to main street and back into local economies. Joining us, we have two experts who spend a lot of time crafting solutions to create ease for both commuters and entrepreneurs through cost savings, speed rider experience, and more. Let's welcome Chapin Flynn, Senior Vice President of transit and urban mobility at MasterCard. Chapin, thanks so much for being here.
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C
Thanks for having me, Ginger.
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And Mark Langmead, Director of Revenue and compass operations at TransLink, Vancouver's transportation authority. Hey there Mark.
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Hey there.
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Chapin. I want to start with you. A large part of your work focuses on improving the commuter experience under the umbrella of urban mobility. Explain for the laypeople out here, what is urban mobility and why does MasterCard care about this?
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C
Well, JJ, I'm probably really biased when it comes to this one, but I feel like urban mobility is really the lifeblood of thriving cities and countries. US at MasterCard, it's about enabling people to move freely and efficiently, connecting them to things like healthcare, education and employment. And we really see that as our responsibility to help create a future where transit is simple and intuitive. That means making it easy for riders to access transportation through digital payments, supporting transit authorities and operators with data driven insights, and partnering with public sector leaders to enhance the way we deliver those services. So at MasterCard, we take a holistic approach. We look at every opportunity to make the urban mobility ecosystem work better. If somebody still has to, I don't know, download multiple apps or stand in long lines for a ticket, that's an opportunity, and we want to challenge that as the status quo and make it easier and simpler. And at the end of the day, I guess, why does that matter? Because when mobility works, cities flourish, it drives economic growth, it supports small business, creates more inclusive urban environments, and making sure everyone, regardless of income or neighborhood, can participate in city life. Across the globe, we're enabling people to move through their environments with ease, while helping transit operators reduce cost and increase efficiency by powering safe and simple payments across public transports, bikes, scooters, automobiles. I guess you could say we're making getting from A to B as easy as possible.
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And Mark, you're the one who's actually on the ground seeing how this is getting easier and trying to make it easier. You are focused on improving Vancouver's transportation network, and transit payments are a key part of that, as Chapin just explained to us. What are the main challenges you see in this area and how is technology helping that?
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Some of the challenges that are happening is really keeping up with customer expectations. They're changing rapidly. And in the transit space, what we've done in Vancouver is enabled contactless payments right on a bus or on a train, and you can just travel very, very quickly and easily keeping up with that. And what's behind the scenes of that is an incredibly complex system of technolog, including hardware, software, multiple payment processors to end. To end those transactions. So that's really the challenge. And in transit, speed is everything. So being able to do it quickly is really king. You never know. More pressure than you're for at rush hour and you're looking at a subway gate and you got a lineup of people behind you, and for some reason it's not letting you through. So, you know, it's the challenge that we have in this space, which is also really exciting because we're there, we have it, it works, and people love it.
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B
It's interesting keeping up with people's expectations, but I imagine in some cases you want to even be ahead of their expectations.
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Absolutely. And we do a lot of looking around the world. We look for best practices. We're very fortunate that we've been able to enable technologies such as contactless payments first in North America, that we did it system wide. We do have an integrated system. We have over half a billion trips taken on our system each year. And so it's a lot of people that bring a lot of different payment formats to the system. So we see every type of payment you can possibly imagine. And we have to sort of really anticipate what people are going to want to use to pay. So that's a big part of that. These systems also take many years to actually scope out and put into place. Typically it's five plus years. Five would be about the best case scenario to put a new system in. We're in the middle of doing that right now and so we're really looking at, you know, what's going to happen in 20, 30 and beyond. So it's really crystal ball gazing.
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Chapin when we think of MasterCard, we obviously think of a leader in payment, but a lot of people don't necessarily think of MasterCard working with governments. And a lot of your work with governments really flies under the radar. So can you give us some examples of how MasterCard is partnering with cities and making payments like the ones Mark's talking about? Simpler and how far reaching are these initiatives?
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C
At MasterCard, we think that mobility is more than just movement. It's about access, equity and opportunity. And simplifying how people pay for transit is a powerful lever to sort of unlock that. The example of London, which is probably the oldest, this kind of tap and ride capability, where we partnered with Transport for London to create the first open loop contactless payment transit system. That means riders can just tap their bank card or their mobile wallet right on the gate or turnstile, no need for queuing or a separate card. It's fast, it's intuitive. We've taken that same approach in New York City, where a little more recently helped roll out Omni across the New York mta. We've scaled it even further in examples like nationwide in the Netherlands, where contactless payments work seamlessly across trains, buses and trams everywhere in the country. But I would say it's not just big cities. One of our fun ones was in the Maldives. We helped digitize ferry payments, bringing kind of modern convenience to island communities. Another example is in Lochte, Finland. We partnered with a company called freeb to enable tap and go access to E bikes, supporting sustainable first and last mile mobility in a city that's already really well known for its environmental leadership. The same principles of ease and convenience we apply to that public transportation and micro mobility also kind of extend to the cars that we drive. So just last month we were working with the North Carolina Turnpike Authority in Volvo to launch a new pilot program to pay tolls. The system relies on A combination of in car software, GPS and some of the latest in secure mobile payment technologies. It's essentially the equivalent of turning your car into a mobile wallet. So when you drive through that toll booth, your car just takes care of that payment. And we really think that impact is real. When transit becomes easier to use, more people ride. I think it also means greater inclusion, especially for the unbanked and underbanked populations who can access public transport using new and different payment methods. Prepaid Mob and other MasterCard powered solutions. But that's really just our work on transit still. And you asked more about government. The team that works with the public sector day to day at MasterCard is really focused on improving citizens experiences with governments through digital transformation. Whether that means paying your taxes more seamlessly, booking a vacation to a faraway destination using agentic AI, or even receiving government disbursements very securely. Our team is touching all of that. And ultimately our work's about partnership. My team collaborates with governments, with transit authorities, tech providers to build systems that are scalable, are secure and centered on the rider experience. Whether it's a megacity like Mark was talking about or a small town, the goal's the same, to make every journey simpler, smarter and ultimately more connected to the life of the city.
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It is interesting how much work goes into it on your side and on Mark's side. But to the point you were making earlier, Mark, how quickly the consumer expects it. I'm just thinking about my experience in New York City. It was life changing. The first time I knew I could just tap my phone. But now I expect that everywhere I go I should never have to pull out my card, pull out something, wait in the line. It should just be able to get right through. And so for you guys to keep up with customer expectations, I imagine is just a big job. Mark Chapin had just talked about when we make it easier, we get more riders. And so for somebody who's looking at infrastructure and mobility as a whole, how do you keep up with increased ridership as payments get easier?
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Yeah, it's a good challenge to have. Vancouver is one of the fastest growing riderships that we have in North America. We had pre Covid 6.5% per annum increases year over year for growth, which is really fantastic. And we are past the pre Covid levels now today. So we've seen it respond really, really well. Notwithstanding people working from home and different changes in in how people commute, we've actually exceeded all of our previous records. So it's really impressive. It's great It's a good problem to have, but the pressures are high. You know, we have to adapt. We look now to the number of people on an individual bus or on a train, and then we can actually, in real time, start to adjust our services. And so payments is actually more than just from a customer's perspective, how you pay for the service you're getting, but also turns into metrics that the agency can then use to actually make that experience better and respond to people's demands and what they're looking for of transit agency, which makes that competitive advantage when you make that choice between multiple modes that you can actually choose to travel. So you can, you know, you can take a car or you can take an Uber or Lyft or an EVO rideshare ride, hailing and transit. And so we want to be the first choice of those. You know, that that's success for the region, it's success for our economies. So that's really where we're focused. And using the data that comes from payments and seeing how people move through the system and are actually using your system through how they pay for the system is really a key to that. So the data is just as valuable as really the revenue that it comes with.
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How quickly can you move on that data?
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Really quick.
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So if you see, for instance, bus traffic at a certain time is much higher that you're seeing for the payment system. You need to put more buses in.
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Yeah, real time. So one of the things, we're a World cup city, so we've got FIFA World cup coming in next June, July. Please come to Vancouver and check it out. It's going to be great. We'll be able to see the number of people coming downtown for the games and then be able to adjust it. Because, of course, when you're tapping in on a bus or a train, we of course know where that is going to take you. And so then we can actually project how many people are going to need to leave after the game is finished. And so through that, we really optimize our services and make it a good experience.
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That's amazing.
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I was just wondering, when you get people arriving for the World cup, are you doing anything to capture them right when they first arrive, like as they get out of the airplanes to say, hey, we're here, we can get you around the city very easily?
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Yeah, absolutely. We're looking to do more through automated messaging and things like that. But right now, the very best way to go from the airport to downtown Vancouver or anywhere in this system is really using Our train system. So we have Canada line that runs from the airport right downtown. It's a system that is just incredible. Five minutes headway and three minute headway so that the train is always there for you and it takes you right downtown. And traffic doesn't affect it. It's underground, it's running below surface. So it's really, really convenient. It works really, really well. And again, we would everybody come in and take that train, especially given the cost of parking and the like.
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Chapin, let's get back to you and talk about money spent on transit. If you live in, in essence a transit desert like I do right now, for instance, you have to drive. That is the option. You have to drive or get in a car one way or another. And that is expensive. So when public transportation gets better and so commute costs, getting places starts to get cheaper, what happens with that money? Where does it go?
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This is a great question. It's one I'm really personal passionate about. I think it gets to the heart of why urban mobility matters so much. Because you mentioned this. When transit is hard to access or it's unreliable, people do spend more on fuel, more time commuting, less time in their own communities. It's especially true in what we call transit deserts, areas with little or no public transportation. A couple of years ago we did a study, the MasterCard Economics Institute did a study that found nearly 36% of Americans live in transit scarce areas. In those zip codes, residents spend a significantly higher share of their income on automotive fuel, up to 26% in some cases. That's money that would otherwise be spent maybe at a local business, groceries or even on savings. It's not just about dollars, it's about opportunity. When we improve transit, we make it easier, faster, more seamless. We unlock spending power. We're shifting spend from cars to main street. We help small businesses near transit hubs thrive because more people are walking by grabbing a coffee, shopping, engaging. I'm sure Mark sees that every day. And it's not just theoretical. We've seen it play out in cities like Amsterdam and New York where contactless transit systems have flourished and strengthened commercial corridors. Even in Spain, we've brought our tap and ride sort of E bike partnership to hotels and cruise ports, helping people make more sustainable local trips and supporting the environment and the economy at the same time. Time ultimately better transit is just better business. I think it's a multiplier. It connects people to jobs, to education, to commerce. It reduces the friction I mentioned before and even increases inclusion. And for Small businesses, it's a lifeline, bringing customers to their door and keeping those neighborhoods really vibrant.
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Yeah, and I imagine also bringing employees to their door. Mark, do you see this in Vancouver where you've seen small businesses benefit from better public transportation?
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Oh, absolutely. What happens with transit, which is really exciting, is it exposes people to areas. If you're on a bus, you actually are looking out the windows as opposed to if you're driving, you're looking ahead, you're focused on the traffic. Whereas if you're driving in a bus, you're truly a tourist in your own city and you can actually see businesses. We have very big windows on all of our buses, all of our trains, every, every station is now glass and it's with a view you actually get to see outside. And when you do that, you all of a sudden you see things that spark your curiosity. And so you'll see businesses and you'll be able to easily hop off and go visit it and then hop right back onto a transit. So we do see it. It is a huge economic driver. Wherever we have and put in our train stations, we actually see many city centers popping up in a few. Take a look at what has happened since 1986 when TransLink brought in the Expo line, which was our first elevated automated light rail system. To today you actually have multiple city centers all along that line. That's where you have the flourishing businesses and residences and all of the other things that go with that. So it's a big, big driver to seeing the city grow and develop.
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Also, this is small in comparison to that. But you have a captured audience for all of those advertisements.
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You bet, right?
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I mean, Chapin, is there anything we can learn from what you've been working on, what Mark has shown as an example that we've rural networks or smaller cities can take from this?
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Absolutely. I think one of the biggest shifts we've seen is that innovation is not reserved for cities. The same principles that make transit seamless in places like Sydney or Singapore can and should be applied to smaller or more rural networks. Maybe an example of that could be our partnership with uberider and Baja Cairo in Portugal. We helped deploy a cloud based commerce platform that's super lightweight. In some cases, it's as simple as putting a mobile phone on a bus. Now that's not nearly as advanced as what Mark's doing, but it's not a massive infrastructure overhaul either. There's not a five year implementation timeline. It's just plug and play technology that in the right situations makes transit easier for riders and more manageable for operators. And what's exciting about that, I think, is the speed of that delivery and adoption. We've designed the products that we work with to really be right sized, meaning they can scale up to a Vancouver and they can scale down to a small town with 30 buses, whatever the needs of that community happen to be, whether it's a dense urban corridor or a rural route with a handful of stops. And when that happens, you really start to see change. More people do choose public transport than local businesses. See that increased foot traffic that we talked about, and communities just become more connected. It's a win for riders, it's a win for the operators and for the local economy. The real opportunity is democratizing access to urban mobility, innovation, making sure every community, regardless of size, has the torture tools that they need to build a smarter and more connected future.
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Well, Mark, when you think about big cities, which is what you're dealing with here, we talked about this a little bit, but you have to think ahead. You said it takes five years to implement something. You have to get the newest technology, which may be obsolete five years from now. You have to get through budgets, you have to get through regulations. What had you guys learned that you can teach other cities to kind of move this along faster? What are the biggest hurdles you need to get over?
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The big hurdles is really knowing where you want to go and what you want to be doing and doing so with conviction so that you really, you know, you're on the right path. And so what we do, we, and this is applicable to everybody, is look at best in class in the world. So the world is always shifting and moving. You see trends that emerge out of Asia and also in Europe that we adopted. And so we're very fortunate. Contactless payments in North America and in Canada. Canada is an earlier adopter and before us, you know, Southeast Asia and then of course Europe. And so we look to those agen, we looked at transport for London, love what they're doing. And we certainly saw where they succeeded and where they actually repositioned themselves for success. And so we jumped right to the conclusion. And I think that's one of the things for up and coming transit agencies have so many more options to deliver convenience to their customers because the technology has been proven out by the bigger agencies that were early adopters. So the big agencies have taken a lot of the risk in developing it, and now it's replicatable across a lot of other agencies. As Chapman had just pointed out. It's like cellular, where you didn't have landlines. All of a sudden, you don't need those wires anymore. And that was all the big expense. And the same holds true for payments in transit space. It's just become a lot quicker. We know what works. We know what the customer really wants.
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Leaps forward with technology, with building, with so many things often have a negative environmental impact that often isn't included when you think about the price of what we're getting. So as you move forward trying to make urban mobility better, how do you think about environmental impact?
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From my side, it's really about making the experience of taking public transportation easier. We know that we're helping folks make the more sustainable choice when we do that. And we want to push folks that way. We know that making a conscious choice is oftentimes perceived as requiring a sacrifice. People assume that the option that is better for the environment is not the fastest, maybe not the most cost effective. So we're really laser focused on removing friction and simplifying the user experience. Think about the difference between D.C. as an example. Mark talked about some of the newer adopters. Washington, D.C. just came online recently with TAP and Go. Before that, you had to think about topping up your transit card. Do I have enough on it to make this trip? That sort of thing, versus New York City, London or Vancouver? One required you to remember your past and and purchase one and make sure you had it topped up appropriately. The other one is in your pocket and just a TAP away. And so those sorts of small advancements really encourage people to make the environmental choice without it being a burden at all. So from buses to subways and metros and scooters and bikes, the simple and fast experience we are enabling is driving ridership and providing simple, fast alternatives to driving. And when we talk about micro mobility, we're excited about how the act of essentially renting bikes and scooters can help normalize the idea of the sharing economy. A simple TAP can unlock a fast, fun, rented bike ride. We hope that they'll start getting even more used to the idea of kind of returning everyday products. This same idea translates into things like reusable coffee cups and the like. And we hope that those sorts of small advances inspire that kind of behavior.
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Market seems to make perfect sense. It seems obvious that the more people we get into public transportation, the better for the environment. The less sort of classic Metro cards that we have, the better for our environment. Just tapping with our phone. But are there any unintended consequences of increasing this urban mobility that you had to think about when it comes to the environment?
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Yeah, definitely. There's three areas that we look at. One is of course displacing vehicles, vehicleometers, travel personal vehicles. So when you're taking transit, you're not taking a personal vehicle. You don't have a, a car sitting in a garage for 90% of the time to be used 10% of the time. And so those have knock on effects. And you have to create that car, even if it's electric, it takes a tremendous amount of resources. So that is the first, the direct displacement of emissions because you don't have as many cars on the road. And that's really the bigger picture. The second area is things like compass tickets that we have or any agency issues where for people that go to a vending machine, they buy a ticket, they use the ticket to travel, the ticket then gets disposed of. And today's tickets for any modern transit agency transit system is actually a chip enabled embedded ticket. It doesn't recycle. It doesn't recycle well at all because there's a plastic filament in the middle of it with a chip and the antenna and it's wrapped in paper. So really that's the second area that you can actually save a lot. And of course just operating vending machines is a big expense. And anything that you're spending money on there you're not actually using to deliver service. Because that entire engagement does not add value from a customer's perspective. And I have yet to see a transit agency's vending machine that doesn't scare the pants off of you the first time you're using it. It's just a horrific experience. And then the third area, which is an interesting one, which is really probably one of the most notable is what we call dwell time. And it's the time that buses stay stopped at a curb waiting for people to board and alight when they're paying by contactless. It's quicker. And so quicker means the bus actually gets on to moving people, which is the purpose of the bus stopping is not in our business. And of course, course what some studies have shown is that a cash paying customer takes seven seconds extra to actually pay and put their money into the farebox, which means the bus has to stop. And that seven seconds doesn't sound like a lot, but it translates into 40 to 60 people per bus, which translates into about 4.5 million service hours per year that we put onto the road. And we do so buying 60 to 70 million gallons or liters, rather 60 million liters of diesel fuel. And so when you actually make that small little change, the payback is enormous and the environment is definitely better off for it.
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I just think of myself standing in front of those vending machines. I'm like, I've got a lot of education, a lot of experience and yet still I'm like, wait, what button do I press here?
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Absolutely.
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I get it, I get it.
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Jj, I'm going to quote Mark on. He has yet to see the vending machine that doesn't scare the pants off somebody. So that's going to be my Mark Langmeadism from now on.
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It's a Halloween thing. Literally you just dress yourself up as a vending machine.
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I'm like, is it peak time? Am I not peak time? Where am I going? I don't know. Yeah, hilarious. Well, let's look to the future, but the immediate future, not the far, far future. I'll start with you, Chapin. What is the thing you are most excited about coming up in the next year?
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One is just continuing this journey of bringing frictionless urban mobility to new environments. Mark talked about this in Vancouver, but. But there are lots of places around the world that don't have this really simple, easy way for people to avail themselves of frictionless urban mobility. And cities like Los Angeles and Barcelona will be getting that in 2026 and really excited to keep that journey going into next year and beyond. But maybe I'll be a little more forward looking about my other statement. I think this idea of in vehicle payments and cars being a connected payment device is a really interesting concept. So if I take it a couple years forward, I could picture driving to work and my car maybe even prompting me to say, hey, we noticed you stopped by that Starbucks twice last week. Do you want us to order the coffee now? So it's being poured and is hot right when you pull up. And I think that sort of idea of the car getting to be that smart and even conducting the payment on your behalf, maybe even buying your train ticket or your bus ticket in the future because it knows what's upcoming, I think would be a really great, not too far down the road, future technology.
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B
What about you, Mark? What's the thing you're most excited about?
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Well, definitely World Cup. That is front and foremost right now for us. We're really geared up, we're excited to host the games and it will be the single biggest sporting event of all time. So it's pretty big deal. One of the things that I see is an innovation that will come and we should have it in the near future. Is the ability to. When you buy an event, like a sporting event, it comes with transit. It's already in the ticket. And use the same ticket if you. You print it off or if it's on your phone or if it's used by your payment source. So it automatically will know that I have a World cup ticket. I paid for it with my MasterCard. And when I tap my MasterCard on the gate, it will automatically say, yep, you don't need to pay because your. Your transit is included. And the next thing to that is when I land in a city, I fly into Vancouver for a conference, I can tap my MasterCard onto the gate and it's already included. Right? Because it knows that I'm actually a trusted traveler, that I'm part of that conference and everything is taken care of. And those are little things that I think if people know, they love, they love freebies, they love rewards, they love, you know, having something that comes as a perk. And if I'm all of a sudden able to get that just because I tap and I can travel, I'll use it. I'm more likely to use it, which is really the big win. And of course, I don't have to interact with a vending machine. I don't have to figure out if it's peak or off peak. And I'm not dodging the fair inspectors. So it's a, I think, going to be an innovation that's going to pay out really, really well.
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B
Mark Langmead, director of revenue and compass operations at TransLink, and Chapin Flynn, senior vice president of transit and urban mobility at MasterCard, thank you both so much for this deep dive into urban mobility. I really appreciate it.
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A
Thank you so much.
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C
Thanks very much, jj.
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B
This has been an episode of Local to Global the Power of Small Business. For Gzero's Blue circle Studios, I'm J.J. ramberg. We'll be back soon with our final episode.