Transport for London (TfL) is to begin licensing its contactless ticketing system to other major cities across the globe as part of a deal worth up to £15m with Cubic Corporation’s business unit Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS).

“The licence will grant CTS access to London’s contactless system, allowing it to be specifically tailored for other world cities’ transport systems,” TfL says. “TfL and CTS have a long-running partnership, having worked together to introduce the Oyster card system in 2003 as well as working together with the UK card industry to make TfL the first public transport provider in the world to accept contactless payment cards.

“Since then, more than 500m journeys have been made by more than 12m unique credit and debit cards from 90 different countries, as well as using contactless-enabled mobile devices. Around one in 10 contactless transactions in the UK are made on TfL’s network, making it one of the largest contactless merchants worldwide.”

Benefits

“CTS also provides smartcard ticketing technology to a number of world cities, including Sydney, Brisbane, Vancouver and Chicago,” TfL adds. “This new non-exclusive agreement will also enable them to combine the best features from the London and other Cubic systems and make them available to other cities across the globe.”

“We’re delighted to have agreed this licensing deal with Cubic Transportation Systems to introduce our contactless payment system to other world cities,” says Shashi Verma, chief technology officer and director of customer experience at TfL.

“Contactless payments have completely transformed the way people pay for travel in London and this deal will allow other world cities to benefit from the hard work we put into making the system work for our customers.”

Contactless journeys launched across transport in London in September 2014. TfL clocked up 100m contactless payment journeys in June last year.

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