Manila MRT3 EMV and QR Acceptance - I have some answers

Have the bank issuers of debit cards agreed for their cards to be accepted offline, or have they found a solution to get an online authorization every time the debit card is tapped on entry and exit?

Not entirely clear. It is not easy to see whether any of the people on the pictures and video clips actually used a Debit card. The speed of the transaction indicates that there is no realtime authorization for the entry transaction. I believe it is safe to assume that this is no different from any other EMV/account-based ticketing, that is there is an offline authentication and delayed authorization.

Since Debit cards usually require a PIN for every transaction, is there going to be an exception for debit card transactions in transport ticketing?

Various websites show that some banks allow their Debit cards to be used for ticketing (see (3)). There is no sign of any PIN entry at the gate (as expected). The answer therefore seems to be that the PIN requirement for ticketing transactions has been waved for the Debit cards that are accepted.

Is the QR acceptance based on pre-paid tickets or will it work directly with the payment functionality of the e-Wallet application? If the latter, how did they solve the problems I outlined in my previous post?

First of all, at least one outlet reported that GCash QR codes are now accepted (see (4)). I checked out the GCash application, and indeed, there is now an option to create a "Commute" QR code. I will write a separate post about that shortly.

I remember that any change of the gate’s configuration was met with a lot of scrutiny. One of the choke blocks for any change used to be the requirement to process 30 entries or exits per minute. Will the new gates meet that requirement?

I do not think the gate can handle 30 payment card or QR code entries or exits per minute, and I do not think this is a problem. At least the entry transaction seems to be fast enough.

EMV certified card readers with integrated QR scanners, new backend components, integration and operational cost for such an implementation will be substantial. Will this be considered a cost of doing business or is that an investment that needs to be recovered eventually? In other words, who paid for all this and why?

The various parties involved in this project will probably not make this information public. I have found only one payment card scheme making an announcement (see (5)) about the acceptance of credit and debit cards for transit ticketing, and it was from MasterCard. Since this is a rather big step for any of the schemes, I am guessing that MasterCard might have helped the project to get off the ground. But this is pure speculation.

In some other countries, account based ticketing with bank cards started with just one of the schemes (MasterCard or Visa). Will this be the case here as well?

No, it won’t. There are announcements that show both Visa and MasterCard acceptance decals (see (3)).