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Controversy over QR payment in the subways: there are complaints against Mercado Pago from its competing wallets - Infobae
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Polémica por el pago QR en los subtes: hay quejas contra Mercado Pago por parte de sus billeteras competidoras
En bancos y fintech hay reproches porque la empresa tendrá a su cargo la adquirencia del sistema que arrancará en diciembre y temen que eso puede darle una situación ventajosa frente al resto. El doble rol y los antecedentes conflictivos con la banca tradicional
www.infobae.com
October 16, 2024
There are complaints in banks and fintechs because the company will be in charge of acquiring the system that will start in December and they fear that this could give it an advantageous position compared to the rest. The double role and the conflicting history with traditional banking
By Fernando Meaños
600 validator machines will be installed before December, allowing payment at each subway entrance with a card, cell phone with NFC or QR
The opening of alternative payment methods to the SUBE card in the Buenos Aires subways has sparked some complaints in the financial system due to the dual role that Mercado Pago will assume . Marcos Galperín's company was awarded by Emova , the subway concessionaire, to provide the QR payment acquiring service , which, based on the request of the Buenos Aires government, should be operational next December. Since it is an interoperable system , Mercado Pago must provide the documentation for access to the system to all the wallets that want to participate in it, that is, to its own competitors.
At least four virtual wallet companies told Infobae that they are unhappy with the growing suspicion that Mercado Pago's dual role ( acquirer and wallet ) could harm them. This position would allow it to design the standard to its advantage, not share information with its competitors in time, or do both at the same time. The conflictive background of the dispute between the company and the banks over the interoperability of QR payments with cards, resolved after two years of disputes, fueled the complaints.
“They gave them the lead role , we are going to move from the SUBE monopoly to the Mercado Pago monopoly,” one of these companies said angrily. With this word, they define the situation in which the user gets used to having only one wallet that serves to pay for the subway while all the others are just beginning the integration process. It is known that in this kind of business, the one who enters first, wins. And the business is not small: every year 240 million subway tickets are sold . And it can also serve as a starting point for the main fight, the opening of SUBE at a national level.
When the government announced the opening of the SUBE system, there was no certainty about the inclusion of QR payments, as there were doubts about whether they were suitable for use in long lines on public transport. In fact, in Latin America, QR is only used for transport in Chile. But they were finally included along with contactless debit and credit cards and payments with NFC cell phones. Banks warn that this decision was crucial for Mercado Pago , precisely because of the habit of consumers. If Argentines get used to paying for subway and bus fares every day by holding a card or cell phone to a reader, perhaps this habit will replace paying with QR in stores, the field in which Mercado Pago is a leader.
The QR code for public transport is not the same as the one used in shops. It is called “buyer QR” and uses another technological standard that reduces times, since otherwise it would not be viable to use it in transport. “Unlike the QR code used in commerce, this standard is not regulated by the BCRA . Therefore, Mercado Pago can tailor it to its needs and share it with the rest whenever it wants. It has already happened to us,” they lament in another wallet. They clarify that “the rest” are all the virtual wallets in operation, both from banks and fintech. Several of them claim to have contacted Mercado Pago without success. It is unthinkable that a wallet with QR code would not want to join in paying for transport.
When asked by Infobae , Mercado Pago simply said that it is “false” that they are hiding or cutting back on documents with information to be integrated into the system and that they “have not yet been created.” They assured that the standard for the QR code to be used in transport will come from “a joint effort” between the different actors in the system.
At Emova , the Buenos Aires subway concessionaire, they explain that the company's intention is to include as many payment methods as possible to access the subway, without exclusions and with the incorporation of all available options. The announcement by the Buenos Aires head of government himself, Jorge Macri , set the date for December. Emova has already begun the installation of a first batch of 600 validation machines so that, by that date, at each access to the city's subway there will be at least one turnstile where payment can be made with cards, cell phones or QR codes, in parallel to the turnstiles where payment will be made with the SUBE card.
After “contacting several companies,” according to Emova, the concessionaire granted the acquisition for QR payments to Mercado Pago at the same time that it did the same with the acquisition for NFC cards and cell phones with two other companies. In this area there is no double role or complaints, since neither of the two companies is the issuer of the payment methods that it will process.
The first of these is Payway , owned by the Advent fund, which provides payment solutions for more than 350,000 businesses across the country and is a leader in the acquiring business. The other company that will manage the business is Open Pass , a technology company founded in 2020 that counts among its shareholders Fabio Calcaterra , the cousin of former President Mauricio Macri , in addition to a group of executives from the sector who years ago created Monedero , the first card for paying for the Buenos Aires subways. 50% of Open Pass was acquired by Telecom from its founding shareholders in April 2023.
As explained by the company, “OpenPass has been working with Payway for over 2 years to introduce the open transportation payment model in Argentina, which allows payment with any contactless card , credit, debit, prepaid and through different devices.” When the City decided to open the transportation payment system, OpenPass had already been working for over 2 years on business aspects such as “offline payments, batch fare calculation, differential transactional risk schemes, etc., and was the only one to present a solution ready to implement in the market and comply with the corresponding international certifications required by card brands.” Open Pass has an exclusivity agreement with Visa International to be the platform in Argentina as a means of payment for transportation.
