themicah

The latest EasyPay renewals hinted at the fact that the program is ending (my wife got one just a week or two ago), but I got emails today that make it official. Easypay Metrocards will stop replenishing after 5/17/24 and stop working altogether after 7/1/24 (7/1/24 is apparently the last day to swipe an EasyPay card).

Two things they're doing right here are (1) sending out free OMNY cards to Easypay cardholders with a snail mail copy of the email and (2) allowing a final ride with the remaining balance on the Easypay card once it's below $2.90 (but >0) so we don't end up with an unusable balance. But it's not clear what happens to any remaining balance after July 1 if we don't manage to use it up. Are they refunding it or we just forfeit it? I guess we need to make sure to use ours up just in case.

ijgordon

Yeah, just got the email as well.

What's not clear to me is if I will be able to load my OMNY card into my Apple Wallet and set it as the express transit option, so I can just use my phone and not need to carry the OMNY card.
I do NOT want to use my regular credit cards (either physical or in my Apple Wallet) because I don't want dozens of transactions cluttering my monthly statements.
Worst case I can tap the physical OMNY card, like I currently swipe the EZPay Express card, although I suppose it will take up more space in my physical wallet.

themicah

I'm pretty sure the OMNY Card is essentially a sturdier Metrocard with an NFC chip instead of a magnetic stripe that you can top up either online or at a vending machine, not an account like a credit or debit card that you can load into Apple Wallet.

If you want to use Applepay without individual rides cluttering your main credit card statement, you could set your Express Transit Card to an account you don't use for anything else. You could use a dedicated credit card (Citi Custom Cash would be a good choice for this with no annual fee and 5% cash back on the first $500/mo in your top spending category and reliable autopay that pulls the statement balance from your bank each month) or Apple Cash (although you can only load it from a debit card, so no rewards). There are also some credit cards (I think Chase Ink business cards, for one?) that have different card numbers for different authorized users and segregate the charges on the statement by user, so if you have a family member who isn't already an authorized user you could probably make them an AU and add their card to your Apple Wallet for transit.

ijgordon

Seems like you can connect an OMNY card to an OMNY account that you can use to auto-reload the card. I'm not an expert, but I don't see why OMNY technically couldn't be run from the Apple Wallet. Washington DC's SmarTrip lets you do this.

FlyinHawaiian

I haven't received any notification from WageWorks yet on how they will transition me from my monthly MetroCard order.

lrdpenn

Do you all think we use the final <$2.90 balance on a JFK airtrain ride?

themicah

It looks like SmarTrip has an app that generates a virtual card you can store in Apple Wallet. OMNY doesn't have anything like that. The OMNY card is basically just a Metrocard with an NFC chip instead of a mag stripe. Here's a reddit thread confirming the same:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OMNY/commen..._i_can_add_to/

My employer issues a HealthEquity/Wageworks debit card that has an NFC chip so you can tap it at OMNY readers. Unfortunately the Healthequity debit card doesn't work with Apple Wallet, though, so I either have to carry that card around and fish it out to pay for the subway, or I just use a regular credit card with Apple Pay and email my credit card statement to Wageworks each month to get reimbursed for my transit payments.

I doubt it will work, but I think there's a special Flyertalk "value-hacker" badge if you manage to pull it off!

FlyinHawaiian

I’m currently ordering a monthly 24 ride Pay-Per-Ride MetroCard via WageWorks; will see what my migration options will be.

lavedder

I am a senior using MTA EasyPay reduced fare card. I have not received any notification yet.

themicah

Does your employer only offer prepaid metrocards? If you can get the debit card, it's nice to be able to take advantage of the $34 weekly fare cap via OMNY if you ever have a busy week, plus the ability to pay for other mass transit providers (NYC Ferry, PATH, NJT, Amtrak, inter-city buses like Megabus and Flixbus, etc.).

themicah

I bet they're waiting for the reduced-fare OMNY cards to come available, as I don't think those have been released yet.

st1575

Is this the one that was co-branded with TransitChek in the past?

If memory serves, these MetroCards are "special" and always been handled as such. Just check out this nugget from the announcement about the most recent fare increases:

https://order.transitchek.com/Resour...Alert_v1_0.pdf

FlyinHawaiian

I can get an unlimited 30-day or the WageWorks commuter card but my ride patterns wouldn't meet the break-even points. I might exceed the $34 weekly fare cap once a year.

I used to get the ones wrapped in cellophane but a few years ago they just started sending me a MetroCard loose in the envelope.

st1575

Wow, that's a real low-tech operation tied to the original fare-media restrictions, but not really well-adapted these days.

As others have mentioned, I too expect these Metrocards to be phased out with extreme prejudice as the days of non-reloadable media are clearly ending.

themicah

So apparently we have to wait until after 5/17/24 to use up the credit below the $20 replenishment threshold. I put a dummy virtual credit card in my Easypay accounts so we could drain the cards sooner, but when my wife's card balance dipped below $20 it stopped working. I manually topped it up to $20.35 with a one-time payment so it would go back to "active" status, and we'll wait until after 5/17/24 to start using it again.

Note I chose $20.35 because it's 5 cents more than the lowest multiple of $2.90 over $20 (= 7 * $2.90 + $0.05), which will hopefully give us the final ride for 5 cents. Not as good as [MENTION=270795]lrdpenn[/MENTION]'s AirTrain idea, but seems more likely to work.