Some SEPTA cards are being declined because they are encoded with the wrong expiration date

Select student, senior, paratransit and reduced-fare SEPTA cards are being wrongly declined, the transit agency said Thursday. 

Riders started experiencing issues Wednesday on Regional Rail, trolleys, subways and buses because of a production error that encoded the cards with the wrong expiration date. As a result, they stopped working Dec. 31 despite a different date appearing on the cards. Standard SEPTA Keys and other contactless payment methods are not affected.

Cashiers, operators and other staffers are aware of the problem and will be there to make sure riders can still board. However, SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch thinks the issue will continue into Friday, and he's doubtful a solution will be in place even by Monday.  

"It's not going to be an end-of-the day type fix," Busch said Thursday. "We expect probably at least days before we have a resolution in hand."

SEPTA said about 100,000 cards were in the batch of affected cards, which the transit agency received in 2020 and distributed in the years that followed, but it doesn't know how many of those are still active. 

There's also no way for riders to know whether their card has been affected other than tapping it on SEPTA, Busch said, as the visible expiration dates vary even within the same batch. 

SEPTA's working with both the card manufacturer, Magnetic Ticket and Label Corporation, and the payment system operator, Conduit Financial, to see if there's a way to fix the problem. If not, new cards will need to be issued. 

In the interim, Busch said SEPTA wants to make sure people know about the error and will be making announcements at stations and put an alert in the app to inform riders. 

"We're probably still going to be in a situation where we're going to have people in the field letting them through the turnstiles and making sure that they can get on buses," Busch said. "We think that's probably best, just to make sure that people are aware of it and not surprised by it."