1 million pound Oyster card

[bakerstreet]

TfL purchases £1m Oyster rights
Transport for London (TfL) has bought the rights to the Oyster Card brand for £1m.
It means TfL can look at other uses of the Oyster electronic smartcard system, which is currently used as a pre-pay ticketing service.
It has said it had already undertaken a trial of Oyster on bank cards and mobile phones.
TfL has bought the rights from TranSys, whose contract to run the service expires this August.

'£4m savings'
Cubic Transportation Systems and HP Enterprise Services will then take over operating the system for the next five years.
TfL also has announced the early repayment of £101m of private finance initiative debt, owed to TranSys.
A spokesman said this had delivered £4m savings in interest payments.
Kulveer Ranger, the Mayor of London's transport adviser, said: ''Oyster has the potential to be used for so much more than simply getting around the capital.
"And the technology is there to make it even more convenient for Londoners to use by integrating it into mobile phones or bank cards."

Is it just me or does this seem a waste of public money? In particular, noone else uses the Oyster brand, TfL presumably commissioned the company to do the work. Wouldn't you think they could have included a buyout for the name and logo?

 

[tbtc]

Oyster could be a major brand in the future. We've just had a trial of a cashless payment card in Sheffield ("YorCard), some towns have trialled similar systems (Swindon?), there'll be a big future in cards like this. Why not protect the forerunner brand now, because it could make a fortune if marketed properly

 

[Deerfold]

Is it just me or does this seem a waste of public money? In particular, noone else uses the Oyster brand, TfL presumably commissioned the company to do the work. Wouldn't you think they could have included a buyout for the name and logo?

Unfortunately the company who ran the system owned the name, TfL only had rights for a number of years. Can you imagine the cost of everything having to be rebranded if TfL did not own the name indefinitely?

 

[flymo]

As a little aside, we have had smart ticketing (Octopus) here in Hong Kong since about 1997 and since then it has become so widespread and so easy to use that in some places has it virtually taken over as the payment method of choice. In some applications it was so successful that they now do not accept cash.

http://www.octopus.com.hk/get-your-octopus/where-can-i-use-it/en/index.html

It may be that TfL want to expand the use of the Oyster card similar to what has happened out here.

 

[mickey]

I get the impression no one really expected the name to take off in the way it did. This has been a thorn in TfL's side for years - they've known for a while that the rights to use the name were running out and that they had little leverage over the company that owned the name and have no doubt been looking at emergency plans for how they could change the name pretty much overnight - and which name they could switch to. On this basis, given that they are now completely secure in the future of the system's naming rights, I don't think it was a waste of money, despite it being quite a high amount and the current economic and political climate.

That said, I hope if it ever cascades to the rest of the country that they don't milk it for everything it's worth and charge only small 'rents' to provide a benefit to the national taxpayer.

 

[jon0844]

Oyster could be a major brand in the future. We've just had a trial of a cashless payment card in Sheffield ("YorCard), some towns have trialled similar systems (Swindon?),

I read that and chuckled to myself when I imagined the card being called 'Swindon' as against being something in Swindon

Surely it was always expected that a system used by MILLIONS of people every single day was going to become a recognised brand. Everyone is going to refer to their 'Oyster card' as against a smartcard ticket. I immediately thought of Octopus too, and I bet most countries will have found the same thing if they launched a smartcard system with a brand name.

There is one issue though; they need to ensure that Oyster doesn't become a new way of referring to OTHER smartcards. If they do, and Oyster becomes the new 'hoover' then they'll ultimately lose the trademark anyway. That will be some way off though, given that smartcards are being implemented so slowly in the UK as a whole.

 

[Deerfold]

There is one issue though; they need to ensure that Oyster doesn't become a new way of referring to OTHER smartcards. If they do, and Oyster becomes the new 'hoover' then they'll ultimately lose the trademark anyway. That will be some way off though, given that smartcards are being implemented so slowly in the UK as a whole.

And rather annoyingly Oyster is incompatible with most of the other smartcard systems (notably that used in the 60+ bus passes) because the national standard was chosen after Oyster had been comissioned. Which means if a national smartcard system ever happens it's unlikely to use the same readers as Oyster,

 

[mickey]

And rather annoyingly Oyster is incompatible with most of the other smartcard systems (notably that used in the 60+ bus passes) because the national standard was chosen after Oyster had been comissioned. Which means if a national smartcard system ever happens it's unlikely to use the same readers as Oyster,

The readers they've installed at some Merseyrail gates (presumably for testing purposes? I don't know) certainly look the same as Oyster ones...

 

[jon0844]

Deerfold;
Do the readers need to be replaced or have the software updated? The cards would need replacing, but that's not that difficult - besides the cost.

 

[TsLeng]

I think a million quid is cheap.