Nexi opens Campania's public transport to JCB and UnionPay tap-and-go

Nexi announced on 3 September 2026 two separate agreements, with JCB International and with UnionPay International, that extend open-loop contactless acceptance to holders of both schemes across the Unico Campania transport consortium in southern Italy. Passengers with a JCB or UnionPay card or a smartphone wallet can tap at gates and on-board validators on metro lines, funiculars and buses in the region, including Naples and Pompeii, and the two schemes are also accepted at Unico Campania's physical ticket offices.

Nexi is the acquirer behind the Tap&Go service; the rollout is progressive across lines and services and no go-live date for full coverage was given. Nexi's Filippo Maria Signoretti (Merchant Solutions Director), JCB International's Hiroyuki Katano and UnionPay International's James Yang are quoted. The same model was first deployed by Nexi in Rome in May 2024.

Open-loop transit is one of the few remaining places in Europe where a scheme's acceptance footprint is still visibly incomplete, and Campania is a tourist corridor where the missing schemes are precisely the Asian ones. For Nexi it is an incremental estate win in its home market that arrives without a competitive tender — the consortium is already on its rails, so the deal is about widening the scheme mix on installed validators rather than displacing an acquirer.

It also shows JCB and UnionPay continuing to buy European acceptance region by region through a local acquirer instead of a pan-European deal, which keeps the acquirer in the position of gatekeeper.

Whether Nexi extends the same JCB and UnionPay transit model to further Italian regions after Rome and Campania, when full coverage across Unico Campania's lines is reached, and whether other European transit acquirers follow with Asian-scheme acceptance ahead of the 2026/27 tourist seasons.

• financialit.net
• Finextra, 4 Sep 2026 — Nexi, JCB and UnionPay team on Italian public transport payments