Development of Electronic Payments in Poland Using the Example of Local and Regional Collective Transport

The development of information technologies and data transmission, as well as their increasing availability resulted in ever more frequent implementation of fare collection systems that use electronic cards and carriers of information about having paid the fare or being authorized to ride, on another basis. Over the last several years, many solutions with the use of electronic tickets have been implemented in Poland. Their common feature most often is that the card – ticket is dedicated only to services related to collective urban transport; there have been few solutions which extend the functionality of the card – ticket by adding the possibility of paying for other municipal services, or paying fares in regional transport. The solutions that implement payments with the use of electronic cards belong to the general strategy of dissemination of non-cash transactions, in this case in the public sector. The paper presents issues related to the development of non cash transactions and settlements, and – in the background – the scope as well as institutional and organizational solutions, which meant are to provide openness and interoperability of the implemented systems that allow card payments for public services.