Transport for London (TfL) has licensed its contactless payment system to US-based Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS) in a deal worth about £15m.
The agreement is part of London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s plan to generate more money for TfL by selling their best practice to other transport hubs.
Sadiq Khan said: 'I made a firm commitment to sell Transport for London's expertise around the globe.
“We will use the income from those deals for further investment in new infrastructure and to freeze TfL fares.'
The deal will see CTS adapt London's contactless ticketing system globally to work with existing transport systems in other cities.
CTS has worked with TfL since 2003, introducing the Oyster card system in 2003.
The contactless payment system was first introduced on London's buses in December 2012. It was then expanded to cover the city’s Tube and rail services in September 2014.
Apart from London, CTS is offering smartcard ticketing technology to several other cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, Vancouver and Chicago.
The new non-exclusive deal will also allow the cities to integrate the best features from the London and other Cubic systems.
TfL chief technology officer and director of customer experience Shashi Verma said: “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.”
In July 2014, TfL signed a £660m 10-year Electra contract with CTS. The deal covers the maintenance and availability of ticketing and fare collection equipment on 8,500 buses, 1,900 ticket gates at London Underground and Overground stations, and 1,800 standalone validators.
