Acumen was responsible for creating a tabletop demonstration application that illustrated the concept of a contactless smart card with transit fare collection capabilities that integrated into the VISA financial payment model. Acumen software engineers coded the smart cards and readers in the demonstration application. Staff used C++ as the primary programming language to perform these tasks. Ongoing public demonstrations of the payment technology app constituted a major accomplishment for this project.
The use of contactless Visa cards and wallets is widespread in the U.S. and predicted to grow. According to EVO, VISA put 80 million contactless cards into circulation in the first six months of 2020. Bloomberg CityLab says the pandemic is also giving contactless payment of transit fares a boost.