Guangshen Railway Co. will buy 125 million disposable contactless tickets over the next five years from Finland-based vendor Confidex, believed to be the largest combined order of its kind.

Guangshen Railway will order 25 million single-use tickets per year, each embedded with a simple contactless chip, to replace its paper bar-code tickets. Netherlands-based Philips Semiconductors will supply its “Mifare UltraLight” chips. The project is scheduled to launch in October.

Confidex is providing the contactless paper tickets to the railway for less than 15-euro cents (US$.19) each, official says. That is substantially below the $.35 to .50 apiece disposable tickets generally cost transport operators elsewhere. ( CardTechnology )

• GRG Banking Provides Ticket Vending Machines for Beijing-Tianjin Inter-city Express Railway
• Beijing Olympics to Issue 7m Contactless Tickets
• ASK TongFang to Supply RFID Tickets for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
• China Merchants Bank Connects to CHIPS for Wire Payments
• INSIDE Chosen for China’s NFC-enabled M-Payment Deployment
• HSBC Joins Hong Kong’s Euro Clearing System
• Visa Launch Asian First payWave Contactless Card in Taiwan
• Beijing Mass Transit Goes Contactless