Smartcards have been around for a number of years, not least in the transport world and have been highly successful in schemes such as Oyster in London. The UK's ITSO specification has the ability to be used across a wide range of smartcard applications, and its current forage into the transport sector has seen it unleashed upon the concessionary fares market with great success.

An ITSO-compliant smartcard provides the opportunity for a smartcard to store multiple products, meaning that an ITSO card can be compliant with other schemes such as library or identification cards, even banking, as well as holding a variety of tickets for multiple independent transport operators. ITSO embraces a multitude of existing card types, which vary in terms of their suitability for specific schemes. These include Mifare(r) Classic, DESfire and Ultralite families, Calypso, Infinion Jewel and the generic microprocessor cards such as JCOP. The cards are all contactless, a necessity in the transport sector as they are quicker and easier to operate than contact counterparts. The ITSO specification has another significant advantage for the cardholder: Its potential for compatibility with other types of services such as library or leisure services means that a single smartcard can be used in a variety of situations.

It could be said that concessionary schemes have kick-started a smartcard revolution in transportation: this summer Scotland, the pioneers of the smart ticketing in the UK, revealed their plans to implement cashless integrated ticketing across Scotland that will allow users to access different travel services, ensuring Scotland has one of the most sophisticated travel systems in Europe in place in six years.

In addition to the bus sector, there is also the development of ITSO compliance into rail ticketing. The UK Department for Transport has mandated ITSO smart ticketing across the rail network with half the rail franchises due to go ITSO within the next two years, and upwards of half of rail transactions being on ITSO enabled smartcards by 2015. London, with its current proprietary Oyster smartcard scheme is due to become ITSO compatible by 2010 both to accept rail issued ITSO smartcards, and English Concessionary ITSO smartcards which are valid for free travel on all London buses.

Why ITSO? The answer is interoperability. So far interoperability - the ability to take your smartcard from one scheme and use it in another - remains an unfulfilled dream and customers need different cards or tickets when moving from one transport system to another. Across a virtually borderless area such as Europe this can be a daunting task for the passenger. Some progress has been made in writing interoperable national specifications: ITSO in the UK, VdV-KA in Germany and Translink in Holland, but even though they all meet the same international and European standards, they are still not interoperable across borders.

The EU-Interoperable Fare Management (IFM) Project, so far supported by the UK, France and Germany, began operating from 1st January 2008. This European project has the primary aim to make public transport more user-friendly by facilitating seamless accessibility to different public transport networks across Europe using smartcards. There is an expectation that IFM will significantly lower the barriers to mobility and encourage social inclusion. Smartcards can also be expected to encourage the use of public rather than private transport, contributing to a reduction of carbon emissions and the reduction or elimination of paper tickets and the environmental impact they create. Smart cards will assist specific groups such as concessionary travellers, migrant workers, disabled passengers or benefit recipients. They can also be seen as potentially encouraging usage of services such as Park and Ride, unlike existing smartcards which are restricted to specific city or regional geographies or operators.

It is all of the participants' intention to link with other leading IFM schemes across the world to provide leadership in this segment and to deliver transferable results outside the transportation sector and to as wide a world-wide market as possible. In particular the project is expected to allow manufacturers and suppliers to offer end-toend transactions in fields such as leisure, event management and social services.

IFM goes hand in hand with recent developments in the ticketing industry and NFC is one of them. NFC - Near Field Communication - is a short-range wireless connectivity standard designed for intuitive and simple communication between electronic devices, such as mobile phones. The customer facing nature of the medium complements all the normal functionality that a smartcard carries, plus providing a communication channel with a product retailer. This range of functionalities, tightly packed into a mobile phone shell, is likely to greatly appeal to an end user.

ITSO is watching this area closely and, as a specification at the forefront of modern technology, is carefully assessing all aspects- benefits, security and implications - of this technological solution. Some argue that it is going to take a long time until the number of NFC-enabled devices in customers' hands will reach figures that trigger ticketing providers' investment into the new infrastructure. But it may well then suddenly and explosively hit the market in ways that we have not yet thought of.