All for one and one for all

Imagine that you’re a student and you use the local transport to get to school, college, university or workplace. Then you use your ID badge to get in. At lunch you decide to go into town and get your food from a nearby sandwich bar and gain points on your loyalty card.

After a while you start to get confused with all the different badges and cards that you own. Only if there was just one card that you could use for just about anything.

This is not a dream, it has become reality in some countries. In Taiwan they have a "Easycard" and they use it for almost everything. From tracking students' attendance to pay for parking. But Taiwan isn't the only place that has this system. In Hong Kong they have a similar system called the "Octopus".

The Octopus card was first set up to use for MTR and most bus routes in Hong Kong. Once it became widely used, the Octopus card started to be used to pay for goods in shops and vending machines. Many schools started to use them to track there students and there attendance.

There have been failed attempts to have the same system set up here in the UK with the "Oyster" card. Mainly because there wasn't a large enough demand for it and no one was aware that it had happened.

The Easycard is currently in talks with smart-cards providers in other Asian countries, including Octopus in Hong Kong, Ez-link in Singapore and T-Money in South Korea but there have been concerns in Taiwan and Hong Kong that people may feel uneasy to use one card everywhere.

Husband and father of two from Taiwan said "We like our Easycard because it's very convenient," he said.

"But who knows what the other governments think - I'd feel uneasy to use one card everywhere. And how would they manage the conversion rate - if I use my Easycard with Taiwanese dollars on it in Japan, the card will be empty in seconds."

Security is more of an issue when the Easycard is also used as an ID card. Then it shows the owner's name and picture - and it could allow an intruder into your office.

"In that case, losing it would be just like losing your keys, you have to act swiftly and call Easycard to cancel it right away." says Jason Chen, from security company Sophos, in Taipei.

"The money on your card can be stolen, for example by using a dongle to make false transactions - but we can identify whether the card reader was issued by our company. We only accept transactions from our card readers."

Once somebody hacked one of the cards and loaded it with more - fake - money. As soon as the card was used, the company spotted the fraud and alerted police.