Contactless smart cards are being progressively introduced to replace paper ticketing on the National Rail system of Great Britain. The first large scale adoption for transport in Great Britain is the Transport for London Oyster card. This uses a proprietary encoding developed by Cubic Transportation Systems. Initially it was only available on the London Underground, but it has been progressively rolled out to National Rail services in and around Greater London.
The ITSO standard has been developed as a national standard to cover all types of public transport. It has been included as a requirement by the Department for Transport for all new rail franchises in the last few years. It is also the format that ENCTS concessionary passes are required to be issued in.
It should eventually be possible for any ITSO product to be loaded onto any ITSO card. However, this has only been implemented so far in Newcastle, where Nexus allows Metro tickets to be loaded on to any ITSO-compliant smartcard, and Greater Manchester, where System One Travelcards can be loaded on to most ITSO cards. South West Trains ticket vending machines allow tickets to be loaded onto most ITSO cards.
Regions of England that have had bodies created to implement smart ticketing include North East England (NESTI), South West England (SWSAL) and Yorkshire and the Humber (Yorcard). Much of the East of England and South East England will be covered by the South East Flexible Ticketing project.
The Welsh Government has trialled a multi-modal smartcard called the "GoCymru" card.
The Oyster card system was not originally compatible with ITSO. ITSO cards can now be used on Oyster card readers.
Some rail staff passes are now being being issued on ITSO smart cards, which should be usable on all train operating companies installations.
As of 7 February 2017, the position is:
Only valid in combination with a paper single or return ticket (as provided for at point 19c in the National Rail Conditions of Carriage.)