London Transport Plans E-money Scheme

Daniel Thomas reports for Computing on plans by London Transport to extend the use of its Oyster smart cards to allow commuters to use them to pay for low value goods and services at newsagents, fast food outlets, supermarkets and parking machines.

'Oyster has the largest customer base of all smart cards in the UK, with 2.2 million users and a significant level of public trust,' said Jay Walder, managing director of finance and planning at TfL.

'Extending Oyster to include low value payments is a natural progression which will make the smart card even more convenient.'

Companies and consortia bidding to run the project are: alphyra; Barclays; BBVA, Accenture, MTR and Octopus; EDS and JP Morgan; Nucleus, Dexit, Ericsson, Hutchison 3G and Euroconex; PayPal; and Royal Bank of Scotland.

TfL first announced its plans for Oyster e-money in March and hopes to use the scheme to generate additional revenues for the London transport system.

More information about Oyster is available at its web site. A press release issued earlier this week lists the shortlist of potential partners for the project.