Smartcards on National Rail

Contactless smartcards are being progressively introduced as an alternative option to paper ticketing on the National Rail system of Great Britain. Tickets for use on National Rail services can be loaded onto any ITSO card.

The ITSO standard has been developed 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 the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) concessionary passes and rail staff passes are issued in.

Three train operating companies have launched pay-as-you-go systems where fares are automatically deducted by touching-in-and-out at the start and end of the journey. Branded as keyGo on Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) and Tap2Go on South Western Railway (SWR), they require use of GTR's The Key and SWR's Touch smartcard respectively. Great Western Railway (GWR) also launched a pay-as-you-go system called GWR PAYG in August 2022, which requires the use of the GWR Touch smartcard. Transport for Wales (TFW/TrC) have also started rolling out a Pay-as-you-go system from, February 7th 2024 throughout 2024 across South East Wales.

The first large scale adoption of smartcards for transport in Great Britain was by Transport for London (TfL) with the Oyster card. It was initially only available on TfL services, but it has been progressively rolled out to National Rail services in and around Greater London. ITSO cards can also now be used on Oyster card readers.

, support for smartcards is as follows: