In message
, at
04:53:09 on Sat, 21 Jan 2012, Mizter T remarked:
It means that customers have to acquire a new smartcard (electronic
purse or ticket wallet) for every different application. I know that in
theory there are "multi-product" cards, but I don't know of any examples
in the wild, and whether for example trying to load a bus pass onto a
library ticket is going to fall foul of red tape at the bus depot or
library.

My bus-pass is also my library card and works fine in both. *Other
council "products" not relevant to me can also be loaded on it.

There were plans for combined Oyster + local library cards, to be
issued by London Borough councils, but this idea never took off for
whatever reason.

My bus card is actually a "Nottingham City Card", and if I was a
resident of the City (not the County) I'd have other "City" products
loaded onto it. For the purposes of this discussion that's still a
"single vendor" card.

http://www.citycardnottingham.co.uk/

[The retail savings are a bit underwhelming (eg one branch of Holland &
Barrett with 10% off for seniors on Thu only), my kids get much better
coverage with an NUS card. And of course, it doesn't deduct my
discounted purchases from the card's purse, it's just a token saying
"give this jolly decent chap a discount"].
--
Roland Perry