The Malaysian Touch’n Go System: The World’s First Nationwide Multimodal Transportation Payment System (with 5 Million Users)

Contactless smart cards are becoming a very popular means of payment for the transportation environment. Most of the currently several 100 million cards are used in public transport, road toll and access control applications. Users benefit from high convenience and operators appreciate the maintenance free reader devices. Cash based solutions are more and more replaced because of handling cost, need of protection and toll pilferage. The described system combines the use of contactless smart card in a "Swipe-Mode" and in-vehicle card readers which allow the car to pass a toll plaza at highway speed. The roadside to vehicle transaction is performed via an infrared link. The multiple application transport payment system currently covers about 80% of the highway network in Malaysia, involving around 5 million card holders and 500,000 in-vehicle units.