Testing the Troika card with Google Pay-now even on the watch?

In August, the Moscow Metro launched testing of the virtual Troika on Moscow transport. The essence of the technology is that to pay for transport, you can use an Android smartphone, in the payment system of which the Troika virtual transport card is entered, which is emulated through Google Pay payment tokens. Smartphones from Apple, of course, are not suitable for this technology (as, incidentally, the ability to replenish the Troika directly without a yellow terminal does not work for them).

Thus, payment is carried out like a regular contactless Google Pay payment, but according to Troika tariffs: it is enough to activate the smartphone screen and attach it to the terminal, although now only extreme terminals at metro stations are supported. Other types of transport (bus, tram) operate at all terminals.

Since November, the number of testers has increased, and now another 5 thousand people can use this service.

I will briefly share my experience.

Adding a card is quite simple: you need to download a special version of the Moscow Metro application, and issue a virtual Troika card there, after which the application will offer to add it to Google Pay. The process of adding takes no more than 5 minutes, and when adding, you can immediately write down an unlimited travel pass for a month with a 50% discount for only 1122 rubles. Other types of tickets are also available for recording, and not only unlimited. All tickets of the regular Troika will be added by the time they go into public use.

A feature of the technology is that Troika can be recorded on only one smartphone; to transfer an already issued card, you need to remove the card from Google Pay on the previous device.

An interesting fact is that the developers of the application have deliberately limited the list of available devices for adding cards to smartphones so far, despite the fact that Google updated the Google Pay application on watches in the summer and allows you to use a Wear OS by Google watch as a pass. And this is even much more convenient than a smartphone in my opinion, since the watch is always on the wrist and the likelihood of being discharged is much less. We are waiting for the developers to add intentionally excluded clock support.

If we talk about stability and speed, then here it is comparable to the usual bank payment, out of 20 passes, only one may not be recognized the first time.

In general, I think even in the current version the technology is very revolutionary and convenient. The speed, convenience and prices of the plastic Troika (and now the prices for testers are even lower) in a smartphone are really convenient and give Android users many advantages.

Of the minuses, it is worth noting the binding to only one device (and if the phone is dead?), The lack of a choice of Google Pay on the watch, and support for passage only on the not without that overloaded extreme turnstiles at metro stations, as well as a limited selection of tickets at the moment. However, the last two “Moscow Transport” promises to fix it by the end of the year.

How do you like the new payment methods? What do you think about new ways and convenience? Ready to go?