13.09.05
Oyster e-money project moves a step closer
Transport for London (TfL) has announced the shortlist of potential partners for the development of London’s Oyster e-money project.
The companies have been shortlisted from a list of nearly 100 companies that expressed an interest earlier this year. TfL has reported that it expects to confirm a partner from the shortlist by the end of the year and to commence trials for Oyster e-money in late 2005 or early 2006.
The project highlights TfL’s commitment towards extending its successful ticketing and payment smart card, Oyster, to low value payments for goods and services at newsagents, parking machines, fast food restaurants, supermarkets and other locations where the importance of transaction speed and the inconvenience of cash are recognised.
Jay Walder, Managing Director of Finance and Planning at Transport for London pointed to the success of similar schemes across the globe, for example in Hong Kong and Japan. He said, "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. Extending Oyster to include low value payments is a natural progression which will make the smart card even more convenient."
The shortlisted organisations and consortia are:
*alphyra
*Barclays
*BBVA/Accenture/MTR/Octopus
*EDS/JPMorgan
*Nucleus/Dexit/Ericsson/Hutchison 3G/Euroconex
*PayPal
*RBS
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