by Mary P Brooke ~ West Shore Voice News
Thursday, October 18 ~ COASTAL BC.
In what seems like a long-time coming, BC Ferries has finally added debit-card option to their point-of-sale (POS) terminals on board the vessels on the major route of their fleet, the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay route (Metro Vancouver-Metro Victoria).
Until now only cash and credit card transactions have been possible on board the ferry vessels at the food stations, cafeterias, and gift shops. A connectivity upgrade was required in order for debit card transactions to occur reliably (interruptions must be 99% or better for good debit service).
Operationally launched today, the availability of POS debit services is part of a two-month trial that could see a decision for permanent implementation just ahead of the busy Christmas travel season, says BC Ferries Public Affairs Manager Darin Guenette.
“If this trial run gets the positive results we expect, the service will just keep going,” Guenette told West Shore Voice News today. And then the service will possibly be offered on other ships in the fleet. But probably not on all ferries because some are so small they have only vending machines.
“We’ve had keen interest in this (debit card) service,” says Guenette. “There’s been a lot of pent-up interest.” BC Ferries has been working on the upgrade for “the last couple of years” toward the installation of the LTE network capability that supports the POS system and the debit service in particular. The previous technical issue had not been speed, but server capability and the wiring in the pin pads. Better pin pads have been installed. Now an “instant, reliable connection” is made possible, says Guenette.
But as for vehicle ticket booths, the debit option is still not available. Apparently the additional time (even a few seconds) that it takes for a vehicle customer to input their PIN and for the transaction to be processed is considerable enough (when multiplied by the number of travelers doing that on a given sailing) to result in not as many vehicles getting onto a sailing. That would impact the amount of revenue per sailing but also could mean some people miss their intended sailing.
In a year about 8 million vehicles are carried by the major route vessels.