Micro consumption

The Beep card is a good idea – if it is one of the options for paying for public transport fare.

Such smartcards are used by people who take a particular mode of mass transport regularly. They see the convenience of the system, and (in the time of COVID) the health safety angle in cashless fare payment.

It’s like the radio frequency identity scheme for paying road tolls. The time saved in simply passing through the RFID lanes while other motorists wait in long lines to pay cash in the other lanes is worth the initial investment in the electromagnetic vehicle tags.

But if you rarely use the road, or take certain modes of public transport only occasionally, you won’t want to buy an RFID tag or a Beep card. You’ll prefer to pay cash for a one-way ride.

If we want public transport in Metro Manila to be cashless or at least free of people-to-people contact, we will need the infrastructure that other countries have, which allows people to buy tickets (still using cash) from a machine for the minimum single-journey ride, the shortest between just two stops.

Even with such machines available in those countries, however, there are always counters where commuters who can’t understand the machine instructions can buy a ticket with cash from a human teller.

The automatic ticket dispensers must be ubiquitous, easily accessible. Those countries also have the equivalent of Beep cards, which can store a large amount of fares for regular use. The stored value can be good for a few days to a year, with discounts offered for the larger amounts. Like the Beep cards, they can be used in different modes of public transport, usually buses and subways.

I’ve bought such cards in my travels abroad. But I can’t remember ever having to pay for the card itself, on top of the loaded fare. The cards are also easily obtainable even in hole-in-the-wall convenience stores and cigarette shops.

In Metro Manila, the Beep cards can be bought only in the railway stations, at certain stops along the EDSA Busway or carousel, and at FamilyMart branches. This 24-hour convenience store chain used to be partly owned by the Ayala Group, co-owner together with Metro Pacific Investments Corp. of AF Payments Inc., implementer and operator of the Beep system.

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Beep cards have been in use since 2015 in the Light Rail Transit (LRT). The cards are now used in the Cebu ferry service.

The officials who thought of maximizing the use of the Beep cards to minimize physical contact during the pandemic obviously thought it was a good proposition. But completely banning cash transactions was a bad idea. Those in charge of mass transport should get consultants from the commuting masses.

President Duterte gets it: many Pinoy commuters don’t buy transport fares wholesale. Even if discounts are offered for advance bulk fare payments, the low-income people who account for a substantial segment of the commuting public don’t have the money to spare for wholesale fares. Their household spending is based on a day-to-day expenditure scheme.

This is also why the sari-sari or neighborhood convenience stores remain popular. They sell products tingi or in small packs that can be bought for equally small amounts of cash.

Sure, buying in bulk is cheaper. Catering to a higher-income demographic, membership shopping chains such as S&R and Landers are thriving in our country.

For millions of households across the country, however, there is simply not enough cash to go around – and no room in the cramped home or in the small refrigerator, if there is one – to buy laundry soap by the pail, cooking oil by the gallon or rice by the sack. Such households buy cell phone and internet load, for use as the need arises, rather than pay for monthly service.

Daily wage earners spend money as soon as it is in their hands, and there is rarely anything left for savings. For such households, tingi or micro consumption is borne of necessity.

They also use public transport on a tingi basis. So they resent being forced to buy their fares in bulk and in advance, and worse, to be made to fork out P80 for the card with a minimum load of P100, with a maintaining balance of P65. An added burden: some loading partners are charging from P5 to P20 as reloading fee.

Then there are members of the older generation who are averse to anything that smacks of digitization. They believe their refusal to learn how to use computers won’t send them to an early grave. They don’t have ATM cards and, for those who have credit cards, they rarely use these. They believe cash is still the quickest, most convenient way of paying for anything. So if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

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For those who aren’t living below the poverty threshold, the initial P180 may be reasonable enough, considering where the Beep card can be used.

Apart from the EDSA Busway, LRT lines and the Metro Rail Transit, the card can be used to pay the toll on NLEX and CAVITEX, and as mode of payment at FamilyMart stores, now owned by Duterte’s favorite businessman Dennis Uy.

But how many regular LRT or bus commuters have cars and use NLEX and CAVITEX? Also, commuters will likely be more inclined to shop at 7-Eleven and Mini Stop, which offer items that are slightly lower priced than those at competitor FamilyMart.

Beep cards are the wave of the future, and the coronavirus threat is hastening the shift to cashless transactions.

At this point, however, when the COVID pandemic has impoverished millions, the shift will have to remain optional. Cash will still rule.