By the end of this months, retail outlets like McDonalds and Old Chang Kee, which accept ez-link cards for payment, will also become automatic top-up points.
EZ-Link, which makes the cards that are widely used for payment on the public transport system here, is consolidating its top-up service under a new name EZ-Reload.
Now, people with an auto top-up service linked to their cards will get their cards 'recharged' with cash when the value inside them hits zero, as they pass their cards over readers on buses and at train stations.
Besides retail points, EZ-Link will extend this to cars with the second generation of In-Vehicle Units (the cards are topped up on passing under Electronic Road Pricing gantries). The new IUs are able to read both CashCards, which are used now, as well as the new Cepas-compliant ez-link cards.
There is a 25-cent service charge for each top-up, though EZ-Link's executive director Nicholas Lee hopes to reduce the cost or do away with it in the future, he said at a launch today (Wed).
For now, top-ups are linked to credit cards, though a Giro bank version will be introduced towards the end of August.
The move is seen as a way of giving ez-link an edge in the transport space over its competitor Nets or Network for Electronic Transfers (Singapore).
Nets CashCards are unable to do such automatic top-ups at the moment, although it has plans to introduce a card that can do so this year.
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