Description
Nowadays most people are familiar with payments using contactless cards, or even mobile phones. But few know that just after Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, the city launched the world’s first payment system using the then-new contactless smart technology.
Drawing on the author’s inside knowledge, this is a definitive history of how the Octopus card emerged, and how it progressed to become the most successful transport-based payment card. Disappointments and mistakes along the way are detailed and comparisons are made with similar systems in Singapore, London, South Korea and Japan. Chapters on lessons learned and the prospects for cashless societies round out the book.
About the author
Rob Noble, an Australian, joined the MTR as Transport Planner in 1976, and subsequently became the Marketing and Planning Director. One of his key responsibilities was ticketing, being intimately involved with MTR’s magnetic multi-ride and stored value tickets, the precursors to the Octopus. Sometimes called “the Father of Octopus”, he was in the right place at the right time to be the driving force in cajoling the five major public transport operators to set up Octopus Cards Ltd (OCL) in 1994. He was the first CEO of OCL. He has a Bachelor of Civil Engineering Degree, a Master’s Degree in Transportation Science, and an MBA, the latter from the University of Hong Kong.
Noble was the key “insider”, and gained unique insights and understandings of the Octopus project over a 10-year period from the time contactless smart card technology first emerged in the early 1990s, till leaving OCL in 2001.
