“With over two million contactless prepaid cards being used for public transit in Fortaleza today it just makes sense to extend this easy and convenient payment solution beyond transportation and into our retail stores,” said Junia Moreira, Libercard’s partner and director. “A large number of our transit riders are part of the unbanked population of Brazil and the ability to use prepaid accounts gives them a safe and easy way to pay for their day-to-day purchases.”

In just three months Libercard had more than $2.5 million in purchases with the first 20,000 pilot cards and plans to issue another 120,000 cards through the end of the year, eventually replacing the 1.5 million transit only cards with Libercard dual use cards.

This Fortaleza pilot is the first implementation in Latin America of a combined contactless payment card for transit and retail use. ViVOtech’s ViVOpay 5000 readers accept prepaid payments for purchases and re-loading both transit and payment accounts is available at all retailer locations. ViVOpay’s technology supports future expansion of the project to include branded contactless EMV payment cards and NFC mobile phone payments in addition to MiFare technology.