Monorail tickets now can be purchased with Android smartphone
Fares for the Las Vegas Monorail can now be purchased on Android smartphones, under a partnership announced Monday with search engine giant Google.
Tickets can be purchased with credit cards, debit cards or PayPal accounts linked to the GooglePay app.
Riders who don’t have an Android phone can purchase “scan and go” mobile tickets by visiting the monorail’s website and specifying whether tickets should be delivered by email or text message. From there, paid passengers can tap their phone on the fare gate and board the monorail.
“We’ve taken the phone and turned it into a ticket vending machine that you can just carry around in your pocket,” Gerardo Capiel, GooglePay’s product management director, said during a news conference at a monorail stop for the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Officials with the Las Vegas Monorail said it was the first transit system to use this type of mobile ticketing with GooglePay while using technology developed by Dutch security and transportation company NXP Semiconductors.
Mobile tickets have become increasingly popular in recent years as airlines and transit agencies offer paperless ticketing.
“To partner with a company like Google for us is a huge event,” said Curtis Myles, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. “We’ve tried as a company to be not just forward-thinking, but we’ve tried to be a good partner.”
As part of the partnership, one of the monorail’s four tubular trains will be wrapped in GooglePay’s logo.
Through the end of April, riders purchasing tickets through GooglePay can get a 20 percent discount on “unlimited ride” tickets aboard the monorail, which range from $13 for a one-day pass to $56 for a seven-day pass.
Contact Art Marroquin at amarroquin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0336. Find @AMarroquin_LV on Twitter.