PRONTO officially launched a few days ago so I went to a trolley station to see what the TVMs and validators look like. First, the TVMs do have contactless and EMV capable readers installed:
(Ingencio iUC150 for the contactess reader, BTW.)
The downside is that the TVMs are still magstripe only as of today.
(While riding is free for September, you do need to load money in order to get a card from the TVM. The Transit Store downtown offers free cards instead if you prefer.) I also only remember seeing Visa, MC and Discover logos on the display, so I'm not 100% sure if they accept AmEx. Regardless, considering how far out we are from the 2015 liability shift, I'd have expected at least EMV to work if not contactless. Here's the receipt regardless:
The validators also look similar to the ones in Portland, which makes sense since INIT did both cities. There also appears to be a barcode scanner on the bottom for those using the PRONTO app. The barcode scanner appeared to be live but I couldn't get my phone to recognize the validator or card via NFC:
So yeah, I'm still not sure if open loop will ever become a thing given the existence of the barcode scanner. I kinda wonder if MTS is just going to have people use their app long term if they want to pay with their mobile devices.