document updated 11 years ago, on Mar 20, 2013

How the Ventra payment system works:

It functions as both a prepaid-debit-card and a public-transit-card. No
companies involved:
- The debit card operates on the MasterCard network, and is provided by Metabank
- Cubic Transportation System is providing and maintaining the fare collection equipment, and will receive a cut of each transaction
- "First Data"
- Monkey Network
There are LOTS of add-on fees.
CTA's motivation in this: "getting out of managing the fare-payment system". "In a nutshell, we're getting out of the banking business"