Metro night bus service starts today in kathmandu

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC), in collaboration with the National Federation of Nepal Transport Entrepreneurs (NFNTE), is set to begin night bus service for the first time in Kathmandu and Lalitpur on Friday. The service will be inaugurated at Shanti Batika, Ratnapark.

Fourteen night metro buses will be operated along six different routes. The service will be operational for thee hours from 8pm and fares will equal to those for day public buses.

According to the KMC, four buses will operate on the Ring Road while the remaining ones will ply on five other routes. Two buses each will run from Satdobato-Lagankhel to Ratnapark, Koteshwor-Sinamangal to Jorpati, Kalanki to Ratnapark, Jorpati to Ratnapark, and Bansbari to Ratnapark. One bus each will run to either side from Koteshwor and Kalanki on the Ring Road.

Officials said the service can be improved upon and extended if the first six months go well. “We will first see the public response and bring further changes to our system,” said KMC Spokesperson Gyanendra Karki.

NFNTA General Secretary Saroj Sitaula said that the first six months would be a trial period. “The service hours, routes and number of buses may be revised on the basis of public response,” he said.

Each night bus with 30 seats will bear the sign ‘Bus operated by the Metropolis’ in neon.

Spokesperson for the Hanumandhoka Police Range Dhiraj Pratap Singh said that police in Kathmandu and Lalitpur have outlined strategies to ensure the security of the buses and commuters. He said that a new security plan had been chalked out considering potential threats such as alcoholism, hostile gangs and pickpockets.

According to Singh, each bus will be guarded by two armed police personnel and a few others in civvies. The bus will be accompanied by a police control room vehicle while personnel will watch bus stops.

The KMC and the Ministry of Finance have allocated Rs 2.5 million and Rs 2 million, respectively, to the NFNTE to meet fuel costs and wages for operators for the first six months in the belief that the service is not commercially viable.

Paypal buys the Cardio credit card scanning service

Payment processor Paypal has bought the creator of a product that triggers cash transfers when a user flashes a credit card in front of their phone.

The firm had previously paid a fee to use Cardio's innovation.

The acquisition follows Paypal's purchase of another smartphone-based payment service, Zong, last year.

The moves may help it tackle the challenge posed by the introduction of near field communication (NFC) payment technology to smartphones.

"We first met with the team at Cardio when we were working on integrating their technology into the Paypal Here mobile app," said Hill Ferguson, Paypal's vice president of global product, on the firm's blog.

"[They will] help us create new experiences to make it even easier for consumers and merchants to use the Paypal digital wallet. The current Cardio technology will remain available to developers for use in their own applications."

Cardio allows users to make payments by "scanning" the front of their credit card using the camera on an Android or Apple iOS device.

The software saves the time involved in typing in the details.

The San Francisco-based business offered its service to consumers for 15 cents (10p) a scan, and charged other companies a fee to integrate the function into their apps.

NFC alternatives

Paypal started using the service in March when it launched Here - a product allowing businesses to accept customers' credit-card payments via smartphones as an alternative to installing a cash-register system.

The effort was designed to compete with an existing service from Square.

But PayPal faces a wider challenge from the introduction of NFC chips into recent smartphones. The technology allows the devices to be used as an alternative to credit cards or cash - payments are prompted by the user placing their mobile in front of a reader.

The research agency Forrester says NFC has only had a limited impact to date as retailers have been put off by the cost of the equipment and the prospect of having to pay a new fee to banks and credit card companies that handle the transactions.

"Paypal has realised that you don't have to have contactless NFC technology to make a mobile payment in a store," Forrester's research director Benjamin Ensor told the BBC.