Metro in Southern California is unique among the transportation agencies in the United States. Created in 1993, Metro transports about 1.3 million passengers daily and oversees bus, rail, highway and other mobility-related building projects. The TAP card allows Los Angeles County passengers to travel with regional and local transit passes on the 24 transit providers. TAP cards offer a secure way for passengers to electronically pay fares and travel by tapping the card each time a rider boards a bus or train. Benefits of TAP include faster boarding times and the ability to recover balances if a card is lost or stolen. The TAP system is one of the largest smart cards systems in North America. TAP cards vary from the regular TAP card to personalised cards for seniors, disabled, and employer programmes.

Idemia, former Oberthur Technologies of America, has been chosen by LA Metro to deliver a complete solution including all the steps from the production of the TAP cards to the shipment to the end-user: personalisation with the cardholder’s data, encoding of the card, loading of the transport ticket onto the card as well as its fulfilment. Thanks to Idemia’s Citygo full contactless smart cards, users will benefit from a convenient, secure and easier transportation experience.

During a 3-year contract, Idemia will provide up to 5.5 million TAP cards per year and will support the fulfilment for about 1 million cards per year.

"We are delighted to provide Los Angeles County transit riders with TAP cards and personalisation services. Idemia has already demonstrated its expertise in transportation and payment markets worldwide, and met stringent technical requirements from Los-Angeles Metro. With a long-term perspective, travellers will be able to benefit from the various innovations of the Idemia offers for transport such as cards and wearables." said Eric Duforest, Idemia, Executive Vice-President of the Financial Institutions business unit.

"Idemia was the ideal partner to provide us a complete solution for travel cards and services. We are especially delighted to take advantage of the technological know-how of Los-Angeles based Idemia services centre for card customisation. Idemia’s cutting edge technology is a real opportunity for us to deploy more secure and convenient products and services for our customers." explained David Sutton, Executive Officer, TAP and Revenue Collections for Los-Angeles Metro.