Mobiles pay for train tickets

Tired of fumbling for change? Forever losing your weekly ticket? Not for much longer, because soon your mobile phone or wristwatch could be paying your train and bus fares. As paper tickets disappear from public transport systems around the world, operators are turning to new ticketing technology such as smartcards, the commuter's equivalent to an electronic tag, or smart chips in phones and watches.
Denmark was one of the first countries to use mobiles to pay for transport fares, but within 10 years phones were likely to be used not only for buying train tickets but for other small purchases, said a transport ticketing consultant from Singapore. "Forget about paper tickets," Bruno Wildermuth told a transport conference in Brisbane yesterday.

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