All Aboard

Over 3 billion people travel the Chinese railways every year. Boy, I sure wouldn’t want to be the guy punching tickets. Starting in October, one railway will become the first to switch from traditional barcode scanner to contactless-only fare collection.

Confidex, the RFID tag design and manufacturing specialist, announces today that Guangshen Railway Company Ltd., part of the world's largest public transport operator, Ministry of Railways of China, has selected Confidex as the supplier of contactless limited use tickets. Under the five-year contract, Confidex is to provide 125 million RFID tickets, with deliveries to start in October of this year.

What’s more, the scale of this project alone exceeds the current size of the contactless ticket market. This will no doubt give the RFID space a “shot in the arm” while further spurring the growth of this market.