Instead of fumbling around in your bag you will in theory be able to simply point your ticket at the gate

London Underground spokesperson

"We are hoping that mainline stations will upgrade their ticketing services but for the time being it might mean having two tickets or being issued with a paper ticket," said a London Underground spokesperson

The Department of Transport admits that the London Underground system is not compatible with standards being developed by the Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation (ITSO).

"It is true that London is not using the ITSO standard but that is because the contracts for the specification and supply of the London card scheme were placed before work on the ITSO standard was completed," said a spokesman for the Department of Transport.

All parties are "jointly working on a study to see how London and the rest of the UK can be made interoperable", he said

The �1.2bn Prestige project is due to be piloted this summer and it is hoped it will bring benefits for Londoners.

"It will cut down on queuing and ticket fraud and instead of fumbling around in your bag you will in theory be able to simply point your ticket at the gate," said a London Underground spokesperson.

Integration vital

Analysts say commuters have to put up with the inconvenience resulting from competing standards for new technology.

The ultimate dream is to replace all the cards in your wallet and have a card that can be used on transport systems and pay your poll tax

Peter Stoddard, ITSO

"It is a general trend to have two or three standards and there is a slow convergence," said manager of the technology group at Anderson Consulting, Sati Bains

"Eventually London Underground has to be integrated with other rail and transport systems but it is unlikely to change in the short term."

ITSO is hoping its specification will be used to develop a smart card with far wider uses than just transport.

"The ultimate dream is to replace all the cards in your wallet and have a card that can be used on transport systems and pay your poll tax," said ITSO's general manager Peter Stoddard.

"The ITSO specification would allow that. It was born out of transport but could be used on a much wider front and there has been a lot of interest around the world."

Government-led

Smart cards have long been talked about as a way of allowing consumers to pay for a variety of services.

Most credit cards have an embedded chip which could turn the plastic in your wallet into a smart card.

But it might be government rather than financial services that drove usage, said Mr Bains.

"The government could save billions on social service fraud by using smart cards," he said.

It would be a logical step to also integrate public transport payments on such cards he added.

"You would be able to catch a bus without having to take the card out of your pocket. The card could also interact with screens at the bus-stop to let you know when the next one was coming," he said.