Paul Korczak
Transportation Council Chair
MTA New York City Transit

Paul Korczak currently serves as Assistant Chief Officer of MetroCard Sales Operations for MTA New York City Transit. His responsibilities include all aspects of the $2.3 billion in sales of MetroCard fare media through vending machines, a retail sales network of nearly 4,500 locations, and through transit benefits programs.

Paul is also Project Operations Manager for the contactless smartcard pilot on NYCT’s Lexington Avenue Subway Line. The pilot, which will expand to nearly 300 buses, handle all fare policy options, accept all card brands issued by all banks, was recently awarded the prestigious New York University Rudin Transportation Center prize for transportation innovation. This is the first pilot in the New York region that uses standard bank-issued contactless smart card devices to pay fare directly at subway gates and bus fare boxes, and that provides an account-based solution for fare payment that is keyed to a customer’s own credit or debit bank account.

For the past 15 years, Paul was the lead manager for the development of the automated vending machines program. He managed the interdepartmental workgroup that designed MTA New York City Transit’s highly successful vending machines. He later managed the deployment of these machines and established all business operations that enabled the first-time acceptance at NYCT of bank payments. The 2,200 machines now process more than $1.2 billion in credit/debit payments annually. He is currently leading the effort for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) to assure compliance with Payment Card Industry security standards, as well as to introduce innovative risk management tools such as Address Verification to the transit vending machine environment.

Since 2003, Paul has been a member of the MTA, PANYNJ, and New Jersey Transit (NJT) Strategic Alliance Committee that is charged with evaluating the business opportunities, developing the business case, and recommending next steps towards an approach to regional fare collection that is based on open, interoperable technology standards. One outcome of that process has been the recent announcement by the PANYNJ to move ahead with a banking payments pilot at PATH stations, NJT buses, and select parking lots. Among other business opportunities, the PA pilot will demonstrate regional interoperability with the pilot at MTA New York City Transit and how customers will be able to shop on line for transit fares.

A seasoned transit professional of 25 years, Paul is Chair of the Smart Card Alliance’s Transportation Council. He has consulted on transit fare payment with numerous transit agencies worldwide and spoken in numerous forums: New York University’s Rudin Transportation Center Executive Leadership Seminar, MIT Senior Executive Roundtable on Fare Payment, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Card Forum, the Annual Micropayments Conference, and the ISO Fare Payment Workshop.