Turkish mobile operator Turkcell has introduced the first mass-transit application for its Turkcell Wallet, enabling bus riders in the Southeastern Turkish city of Şanlıurfa to top up their transit accounts from the wallet and to tap to pay fares if they have NFC phones.

Users can top up their transit accounts with credit or debit cards in the wallet or even have the amount charged to their mobile bills. The balance is added to their Mifare-based transit cards or card accounts at the bus reader.

The service is also available to users with non-NFC phones, including the iPhone, who download the Turkcell Wallet app. To use the service without an NFC phone, customers would tap their transit cards on the readers onboard buses. 

With or without an NFC phone, the bus readers or validators can go online to find out if the user has recharged his transit account.

“When the subscribers top up their accounts, their balance is updated on the server,” Ali Salci, head of mobile financial services at Turkcell, told NFC Times. “Validators in the buses have an online connection, and when the subscribers tap their cards, if there is no balance on the card, it goes online and checks the online account balance and updates the balance (and) also completes the transaction,” he said.

Salci added that if users have an NFC phone, they don’t need the plastic card. “When they tap the phone, it basically uses Mifare ID, which is matched with the transport card account number, so the transaction is completed online.”

This increases convenience for users, who without the wallet have to top up their Mifare cards at special point-of-sale terminals equipped with contactless readers at ticket offices, said Salci.

The transit application in the city of Şanlıurfa, or Urfa, located near the Turkish border with Syria, only has about 200 buses.  

But a spokeswoman for Turkcell told NFC Times the operator plans to add transit applications in new cities soon.

“Up to now, some cities agreed with us,” the spokeswoman said. “We are negotiating with other cities in Turkey.”

Turkcell customers with NFC phones mainly can use bank payment and a toll-collection applications with their Turkcell Wallet.

Turkcell revamped the wallet in October of 2012 adding non-NFC payment applications to the NFC applications launched earlier.