Just listened to a fascinating talk at today's Digital Money Forum in London by Ronnie O'Toole, Chief Economist of the National Irish Bank. Last November, the bank provided a pre-budget submission to the Irish Department of Finance that contained four recommendations about how to reduce inefficiencies in the Irish payment system (Dave Birch blogged about it here). One of the four recommendations was to require that taxis in the country be equipped to for card-based payments as a compulsory measure. We've seen other examples of where transit payments have been the focal point for shifting from cash to electronic payments. Glenbrook's Carol Benson blogged about her experience with card-based taxi payments in New York City late last year.

Barclaycard has announced plans to issue over one million contactless cards this year across the UK. Barclaycard began issuing contactless enabled cards in London in September 2007 with the launch of Barclaycard OnePulse, the 3-in-1 card featuring Oyster, credit and contactless payment functions.   » Continue Reading

The Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council has published a new white paper titled "Co-Branded Multi-Application Contactless Cards for Transit and Financial Payment" that describes "an approach that leverages co-branded card marketing programs and the multi-application capabilities provided by smart card technology. The white paper is intended for mass transit agencies that are considering implementing a new contactless fare payment program or enhancing an existing program through collaboration with the financial community. It is also intended for financial payment card issuers, processors, and service providers who are considering working with mass transit agencies."   » Continue Reading

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has announced it will "partner with NJ TRANSIT to undertake an eight-month pilot test that will allow customers to use contactless bank cards, key fobs, cell phones and other devices to pay for transit. The test will help determine if customers could ultimately use these devices to pay fares on all of the region's transit systems, including New York City's subways and buses." Contactless payment will be available exclusively to MasterCard PayPass customers during the initial two months of the test and to other bank-issued contactless card customers for the balance of the test period.   » Continue Reading

BART has announced that "a select group of BART riders is helping to launch a first-in-the-nation technological trial that will allow participants to walk up to any BART fare gate with a specially-equipped Sprint wireless phone and pay for their ride by tagging the phone on a reader located on top of the gate."   » Continue Reading

Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson spent a few days over the New Year's holiday in New York City - and files this report on using her debit card along the way.

GlobalPlatform has announced that its core device specification – also known as the GPD/STIP Specification – has been deployed in China through the Blue Bamboo H50 Terminal in the recent launch of the Beijing transit card contactless micro-payments scheme.   » Continue Reading

According to the Smart Card Alliance, "the vigorous take up of contactless payment in the United States and its future in mobile phones, plus a Mount Sinai Medical Center initiative to give patients control of their own health and hospital registration information, highlighted the Alliance's annual conference."   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'New card is small change", Jill Papworth reports for The Guardian about Barclaycard's new OnePulse "touch and pay" card that also includes Oyster capability for paying on Transport for London's services. She writes "the all-in-one card will allow Londoners to buy newspapers and coffee, then jump on the tube without ever using cash."

In a longer article titled "The plastic replacement for your loose change", James Charles writes for The Times about the new contactless technology. He notes that "by the end of next year Apacs, the UK payments association, expects five million contactless cards to have been issued in the UK."

Journeypay Limited, a transport payments specialist, Lloyds TSB Cardnet, and Planet Payment have announced the nationwide launch in the UK of a new mobile commerce solution for the transport sector called Journeypay BuyVoice, a fully managed, turnkey mobile payment application that allows taxi drivers to accept Visa, MasterCard, Maestro and American Express cards for payment of fares using only their mobile phones.   » Continue Reading

Marilyn Alva writes for Investor's Business Daily about Verifone and how it's benefiting from wireless POS equipment sales in support of expansion of card acceptance into new segments such as taxis in New York City.

The latest Chicago Fed Letter is titled "Using Payment Innovations to Improve Transportation Networks: A conference summary" (PDF). It contains a conference summary from a session held on June 12, 2007.

In an article titled 'Glitches, spiraling costs may delay TransLink expansion", Rachel Gordon reports for the San Francisco Chronicle about the San Francisco Bay Area's Translink card - and concerns about the program's software, implementation, etc.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) district has announced the BART Rider Rewards MasterCard from Chase - saying it's "the first major urban public transportation agency in the country to provide customers with a program like this."   » Continue Reading

In the UK, Barclaycard has announced "the new look and name of its unique card which will combine Oyster, credit and contactless functionalities. The new three-in-one card will be called Barclaycard OnePulse and is on track to be launched across London this September. Barclaycard OnePulse will be the only UK credit card that combines the ease and convenience of Oyster with the security and flexibility of Barclaycard and new contactless technology."   » Continue Reading

Visa and Creative Mobile Technologies have announced the launch of a program to enhance the payment experience for New York taxi passengers by equipping thousands of New York taxicabs with contactless payment readers located in the back of the taxi, enabling passengers to simply pay with a wave.   » Continue Reading

The Emerging Payments Research Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston held a Contactless Forum at the bank on May 21, 2007. The forum "brought together invited industry experts, academics, and Federal Reserve System payments professionals to explore consumer and merchant payment choices related to contactless (RFID) technology, examine security risks and vulnerabilities with RFID-enabled payments, and finally look at future adoption—the barriers and the opportunities with contactless smart cards." A copy of the agenda (along with links to the several presentations given) is available on the bank's web site.

Paul Nussbaum writes for the Philadelphia Enquirer about the increasing use of smart cards by transit agencies in major cities around the US - including the upcoming launch of smart cards by Philadelphia's PATCO. Nussbaum reports that "Washington, Boston, New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle and Houston are among the regions moving to transit smart cards, with plans to eventually enable the cards to pay for parking, coffee, newspapers and other sundries of the commuting life."

Paul Nussbaum writes for the Philadelphia Enquirer about Gemalto North America's card plant in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, calling it the "biggest manufacturer of transit "smart cards" in the United States."

Dave Friedlos of Computing provides some background on the recently announced Oyster-enabled Barclaycard.

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that the 10 millionth Oyster card has been issued - say that "this is a major step towards TfL's aim of making Oyster smart card electronic ticketing the predominant means of payment throughout London's transport system. Around three quarters of all Underground and bus payments in London are now by Oyster card."   » Continue Reading

The San Francisco area Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) has announced it will begin selling its Fastrak electronic toll transponders in local Costco's and Safeway's. As part of this retail distribution roll-out, BATA has partnered with American Express who is offering $3 to $5 in free tolls to buyers who link their American Express cards to their Fastrak transponders.

MasterCard Worldwide has announced that it is "managing a consumer trial of contactless “Tap & Go”™ payments in selected exit lanes and service plazas on the Ohio Turnpike. The trial is being conducted in partnership with the Ohio Turnpike Commission, USA Technologies and Paywerks, Inc."   » Continue Reading

Dave Birch has posted his podcast interview of Barclay's Richard Mould, head of contactless payments and responsible for the recent deal between Barclays and Transport for London's Oyster card.

In a press release this morning, Cubic Corporation, one of the principal members of the TranSys consortium (the developers of Transport for London’s Oyster smart card transit fare collection system) has provided some additional information about the previously announced exclusive deal with Barclays Bank for the development of a new card that will host both Oyster and Barclaycard Visa on one piece of plastic.   » Continue Reading

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that "passengers on public transport around London could soon be able to make quick, contact-free, cashless payments and travel around the Capital using one card." Barclaycard and Transys, the consortium behind the Oyster smartcard system, have agreed to a three year exclusive relationship to develop a new card that places Oyster and Barclaycard Visa on one piece of plastic. The new card will also include Visa's 'wave and pay' contactless payment technology for making purchases of less than £10.   » Continue Reading

Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "A True Test For Contactless Payments: The Market For Open-Network Transit Solutions" that "identifies the potential market size for transit payments in the US and looks internationally at the deployment of closed loop contactless cards. The report explores the potential market across different modes of transportation and the benefits of integrating open payment solutions into presently closed loop transit payment systems. The report considers the challenges to integrating closed transit systems."

MasterCard Worldwide and VeriFone have announced what they say is "the first U.S. acceptance of MasterCard PayPass™ “Tap & Go” contactless payments in taxicabs, making life easier for busy consumers in one of the country’s largest, fastest-paced cities. The contactless acceptance is expected to roll out to all taxis licensed by the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA)."   » Continue Reading

The October issue of Smart Card Talk, a publication of the Smart Card Alliance, is now available. This issue features an interview with Mohammed Khan, President and Founder of ViVOtech along with a look at Transit and Contactless Financial Payments.

A white paper from the Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council, "Transit and Contactless Financial Payments: New Opportunities for Collaboration and Convergence" (PDF) examines trends in both the financial payments and transit industries and discusses how the two industries could work together to make this a reality.   » Continue Reading

The Smart Card Alliance kicked off its annual conference in San Diego this year focusing on trends in contactless, mobile and transit payments. Among the strategies being discussed is the potential use of aggregation by transit operators to reduce their cost of accepting "open" contactless bank cards.   » Continue Reading

Andy Williams writes for SecureIDNews about MARTA's new smart card-based fare collection system that in the final stages of launch. The MARTA system, built by Cubic Transportation Systems, is the first U.S. system to deploy both limited use smart card paper tickets along with conventional plastic smart cards - both using different flavors of Philips MIFARE chips. Williams quotes Neil Poling, program manager at MARTA, who says ""one of the disappointments in the whole smart card deployment efforts with MARTA and across the country has been the reluctance of banks and card associations to become involved. There have been a lot of promises and a lot of discussion from banks on where we go with stored value, but it's never comes to fruition. When we got into this, we were very excited about the possibilities, becoming partners with banks and card associations, but they've been extremely cautious about getting involved."

John Blau writes for PC Advisor that "train passengers in Germany can now purchase tickets with Internet-enabled mobile phones through the travel portal of the railway company Deutsche Bahn and receive a ticket in the form of a bar code sent via MMS that conductors scan to confirm the ticket."

Jo Best writes from the UK for Silicon.com about Transport of London's Oyster card e-money program and examines why the rollout has been put on hold.   » Continue Reading

Silicon.com shares its opinion about the failure of expansion plans for the Transport for London Oyster card and blames the banks for being very short-sighted.   » Continue Reading

Rhys Blakely reports for the London Times on yesterday's announcement from Transport for London clarifying that they had not pulled the plug on plans to expand acceptance of its Oyster prepaid cards but that the technical and financial partners they were working with simply hadn't provided an acceptable approach.   » Continue Reading

Sharlene Goff reports for the Financial Times that Transport for London has abandoned plans to expand the utility of its Oyster prepaid card after failing to reach agreement on terms with a financial partner.   » Continue Reading

Peppercoin has announced the demonstration of a prototype of a first-of-its-kind contactless mass transit fare collection system that enables consumers to use their existing credit or debit card as their transit pass for the first time.   » Continue Reading

The Smart Card Alliance Transportation Council today announced its first year results, upcoming project plans and new officers, including its new Chair Paul Korczak from MTA New York City Transit. The Transportation Council works to help accelerate the deployment of standards-based smart card payment programs within the transportation industry.   » Continue Reading

Bruce Schaller writes for the Gotham Gazette about transit fare collection systems in general and the upcoming trial by MasterCard and Citibank of PayPass card acceptance at twenty-four New York City subway stations.   » Continue Reading

MasterCard and Citi have announced that they will be working with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and MTA New York City Transit to conduct a trial of contactless payments in select New York City subway stations with pre-selected Citi customers.   » Continue Reading

Joshua Robin writes in Newsday.com about efforts to persuade the New York MTA to replace its current magstripe-based MetroCards with "smart" proximity/RFID-based cards.

The chip in the cards contain an antenna that is powerful enough to be read through clothing and up to a foot away – powerful enough to be read through a purse, said Jae Lande, a spokeswoman for Cubic Corp., a San Diego-based company that makes Smart Cards and MetroCards.