Over his two-plus decades with Transport for London, CTO Shashi Verma has driven a revolution in ticketing tech. He shares some of the insights he’s gained on the journey
When Transport for London (TfL) introduced the Oyster card just over two decades ago, the move was hailed as a radical advance in ticketing. For instance, the smart card enabled 40 people to pass through one gate on the Tube every minute, compared with a mere 25 passengers using paper tickets.
The Oyster card served as the precursor to TfL’s next ticketing revolution: allowing payments using debit or credit cards and, more recently, app-enabled mobile devices. This so-called contactless system, developed in close collaboration with the banking sector, takes money directly from customers’ accounts when they tap the familiar yellow card readers. Introduced on London buses in 2012 and the Tube and several metro rail services in 2014, it has become the dominant method by which people pay as they go on the capital’s public transport network.
Shashi Verma, TfL’s chief technology officer, oversaw the implementation of the Oyster system and the development of contactless payments. Both advances highlight the operational gains that can be achieved when business strategy leads technology selection, he says.
Oyster has cut the annual cost of revenue collection by more than a third. A further cost saving of £50m a year to 2022 was delivered by the arrival of contactless payments, which enabled TfL to close almost all Tube ticket offices.
Identify business needs first, then find tech solutions
“Technology strategy must always be driven by whatever the business needs are. You can’t decouple the two – it’s dangerous to even try,” says Verma, who has held several roles at TfL since joining in 2002, including director of strategy and director of customer experience.
The Oyster card’s development was driven by a simple need to ease bottlenecks at station entrances and exits as passenger numbers increased. Contactless payment was the natural progression, creating new efficiencies and cost savings. It meant that passengers no longer needed to go to a ticket office or a machine to top up their Oyster credit.
“What we did was strip the business’s need down to its core. All we had to do was collect money, not run ticket offices,” Verma explains. “Ticketing is an unnecessary process.”
Heidi Vella 