Cubic Transportation Systems and TfL (Transport for London) are celebrating a win after TfL’s contactless payment system was awarded Best Bank-Card Ticketing Scheme at the 2015 Transport Ticketing Awards on January 27.
The contactless scheme was first introduced on London buses in 2012, and was extended in September 2014 to cover all modes of travel on the world’s largest contactless pay as you go network – covering bus, rail, Tube and tram.
“Bringing contactless bank card payment to London’s entire transit network required innovation at a global scale and a readiness to engage with the mobile payments ecosystem to create and implement a transit transaction model, solving the principles of using contactless bank cards on transport,” says John Hill, managing director, Cubic Transportation Systems Europe. “This was a fantastic partnership endeavor and throughout the payments industry, it is clear the knock-on ‘halo effect’ produced by London’s success has led to a boost in the wider acceptance of contactless across the board.”
Cubic’s legacy Oyster smart card helped set the stage for London to become the first major city in the world to accept contactless bank cards for payment. Since contactless was introduced, the uptake has steadily increased each week. Currently around 500,000 contactless journeys are made every weekday, representing ten percent of all pay-as-you-go trips.
Central to the seamless transition was the Cubic Tri-Reader 3, developed in conjunction with TfL and the first contactless smart card device compatible with all industry standard transportation schemes and contactless payment cards.
More than 20,000 of these readers were retrofitted ahead of the contactless launch with upgrades made to buses, gates, card readers and validators. Cubic also developed sophisticated front and middle office systems to link with TfL’s own back office system for processing payments.
The Transport Ticketing Awards were held in conjunction with the Transport Ticketing Conference, the world’s largest gathering of public transport authorities which attracts over 600 senior transport executives from across the globe.
Original source: Cubic
