Transit benefits enrollment, minus the paperwork.

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Product updates

'Tis the season for agency onboarding

We close out September with 16 agencies live in Cal-ITP Benefits. Looking back, we onboarded our first transit provider to Cal-ITP Benefits in late 2021, nearly five years ago. We added another in 2023 and a third in 2024. In 2025, we launched three more. So far in 2026, we’ve launched 10—with seven going live in August and September. 

Cal-ITP Benefits adoption is growing as open-loop payments in transit become more widely available throughout California. While tapping to pay is easy for riders, implementing the tech stack to support open-loop payments has required persistent effort over several years by many teams at Cal-ITP, staff at transit operators, and our vendor partners, all working together to improve the rider experience on transit throughout California. So it's time to pause and share a collective high five for finishing the many implementations that have been in motion over the last couple of years.

Here are a few details about the agencies we recently activated.

• After a soft launch of the Ventura region in Cal-ITP Benefits in August, VCTC began promoting open-loop payments and coordinated transit benefits for agencies in Ventura county in September. Read Cal-ITP's annoucement and VCTC's press release for details.
  
  

• Santa Cruz METRO went live in Cal-ITP Benefits for its soft launch of open-loop payments in mid-September and is now promoting the availability of "Tap2Cruz" to riders. Expect a broader public announcement in October.
  
  

• Yolobus also began promoting open-loop payments, including benefits enrollment through Cal-ITP Benefits, to its riders in September. 

While we expect new agency onboarding to ease in the final quarter of 2026, our total agency count puts us on track to meet our targets of 1000 enrollments and 10,000 reduced-fare transactions in 2026. 

Cheers!

Andy

Product Lead, Cal-ITP Benefits
andy@compiler.la

The numbers

1,233

Total rider enrollments

Total rider enrollments using the Cal-ITP Benefits app. We aim to surpass 1690 enrollments by the end of 2026. That's 1,000 by the end of the year.

16,291

Total reduced-fare, open-loop transactions

Total reduced-fare, open-loop transactions processed at California transit agencies that have adopted Cal-ITP Benefits. We aim to surpass 21,593 transactions in 2026. We'll need to surpass 10,000 transactions this year to meet this mark.

 +22%

Percentage change in reduced-fare transactions vs. previous month

Month over month change in reduced-fare, open loop transactions. This activity represents concrete usage of contactless payment by people who benefit from reduced fares.

Curious about the history of Cal-ITP Benefits?

We recently transformed the list of links in our Cal-ITP Benefits newsletter archive to browseable, searchable content.
 

Cal-ITP Benefits addresses several of Cal-ITP's key goals to improve transit throughout California:

• Promote equitable access to transit
• Lower costs
• Increase Ridership
• Improve customer experience

The project also seeks to expand adoption of open-loop payments and supports efforts to provide accurate and complete information for planning trips on public transit in real-time. Learn more about Cal-ITP.

Transit providers! Visit the Mobility Marketplace for a catalog of code-compliant products and services offered by Cal-ITP to support your operations.