Of the many skills needed to operate a bus company, airline or train service, ticketing and card issuance would not normally rank highly on the list. But transport operators are increasingly turning to cards to protect their revenue and to make passengers' journeys smoother.

Existing public-transport card schemes

Most existing public-transport schemes in cities, towns and rural areas are based on trains and buses for long-distance travel, combined with buses and trams for local journeys. These are often linked together under the auspices of a local transport authority or consortium, and may offer some form of common ticketing system and fare structure.

Revenue management

The business case for existing public-transport operators to convert their ticketing schemes to smart cards is often very strong, and is based on improving revenue management and reducing operating costs.

Each operator, particularly in a group or consortium, wants to ensure that it receives the revenue to which it is entitled and this demands a shared pool of information about passenger journeys as well as costs. With older forms of ticketing (paper or magnetic stripe tickets) this could only be achieved with great difficulty, if at all; the cost of collecting the data was very high. It was also difficult to check the cash collected by on-board staff. With a smart-card ticket, the card forms part of the data collection system and a full record of all transactions can be collected. This enables revenue to be shared more accurately, and thus encourages common ticketing schemes.