Ottowa is looking to implement an all-in-one pre-paid smart card by 2012 that would enable residents to make contactless purchases at stores, pay for public transportation, borrow from the library and more, according to Top News. Ottowa’s College Councilor, Rick Chiarelli, says the card would also be able to function as a city gym membership […]

Cubic Transportation Systems has been awarded a $10 million contract to manage and operate the SmarTrip Regional Customer Service Center (RCSC) for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) in D.C. SmarTrip is WMATA’s smart card-based fare collection system, designed and integrated by Cubic more than 10 years ago. Cubic’s services for the RCSC will […]

The multi-function, multi-app smart card may not be such a mythical beast Multi-function cards on college campuses aren’t new. Student IDs have paid for meals, accessed residence halls and checked out library books for decades. But adding applications that can be used outside of the university has been more difficult. Off-campus merchant programs are common […]

Mastercard’s PayPass contactless payment system is set to arrive in Azerbaijan and Russia, according abc.az.com. The executive director of The Milli Kart processing company in Azerbaijan says company has begun preparations for PayPass, but is still in the process of determining the cost for chips, readers and other services. Meanwhile, Ekspobank and Sberbank of Russia […]

Gemalto, Crédit Mutuel-CIC and NRJ Mobile have joined forces to offer contactless mobile payment services as part of the “Nice, mobile contactless city ” project. This announcement follows the launch of the first contactless mobile payment pilot in November 2006. The “Nice, mobile contactless city” initiative is the first commercial launch of contactless mobile services […]

The U.S. Department of Defense is planning to pilot using its Common Access Card for access to public transportation, says Bob Gilson, management and program analyst at the Defense Manpower Data Center in the DOD. Gilson made the comments during a session at the Smart Card Alliance Annual Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. Gilson has been […]

Starting June 16th, San Francisco will begin issuing new Clipper smart transit cards in place of existing TransLink passes. The new Clipper cards, which get their name from the speedy ships, work in the exact same way as TransLink, only the smart chip is embedded within the card, rather than displayed on the front. Old […]

Newport Bus of Wales is implementing a new contactless fare collection system, according to BBC News. Newport Bus, along with the assembly government, will make some 650,000 smart cards available for purchase to Welsh riders, who can use the cards to pay for fares by simply tapping their cards against an onboard reader. The passes […]

A team of 14 advisers from global consulting firm Ernst & Young have been called in to fix Melbourne, Australia’s maligned Myki smart card transit system, according to theage.au.com. The team is charged with providing the government with “vigorous” analysis of all the ways in which the $1.35 billion system is malfunctioning. So far the […]

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has finally launched its long-anticipated smart card transit system, according to thestar.com. After four years of waiting, conctactless Presto cards are now being accepted at the Oakville GO station, which sees about 12,000 passengers a day, and will soon be implemented in the rest of Go Transit’s Lakeshore West corridor. […]