MTA finishes rollout of OMNY, allows Apple Pay on all subways and buses

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OMNY readers at turnstiles
OMNY readers at turnstiles (Image credit: OMNY)

What you need to know

  • New York City has finished rolling out OMNY to all of its subways and bus lines.
  • The system allows riders to use contactless payments like Apple Pay to pay for their fare.

As reported by Engadget, New York City's MTA has finished rolling out its OMNY contactless payments system to every subway station and bus line across all five boroughs in the metropolitan area. The OMNY (One Metro New York) system allows riders of subways and buses to pay for their fare using contactless payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay instead of the traditional metro card. The system also accepts credit and debit cards.

According to the report, it has taken around a year and a half between the first install of OMNY until it finally finished rolling out across the city. MTA executive director Al Putre says that the agency has already seen more than 35 million taps using the new system.

MTA first introduced the contactless payments last May, but it's taken more than a year and half for the technology to make its way across New York's transit system. In that time, MTA has seen more than 35 million taps using OMNY, MTA executive director Al Putre said in a press conference today. The next goal, he said, is to bring OMNY to New York's rail lines, and introduce contactless OMNY cards, including reduced fare cards, to bring OMNY's functionality up to par with current MetroCard offerings.

The MTA has posted a video to its YouTube channel on how to use OMNY with your digital wallet:

While MetroCards are still accepted for now, the MTA plans to retire them completely by the end of 2023.

Joe Wituschek
Joe Wituschek
Contributor

Joe Wituschek is a Contributor at iMore. With over ten years in the technology industry, one of them being at Apple, Joe now covers the company for the website. In addition to covering breaking news, Joe also writes editorials and reviews for a range of products. He fell in love with Apple products when he got an iPod nano for Christmas almost twenty years ago. Despite being considered a "heavy" user, he has always preferred the consumer-focused products like the MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPhone 13 mini. He will fight to the death to keep a mini iPhone in the lineup. In his free time, Joe enjoys video games, movies, photography, running, and basically everything outdoors.