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Passengers will soon be able to use their mobile phones to buy a ticket as they hop on board the train.

The Association of Train Operating Companies announced yesterday that it had adopted a nationwide standard for rail ticketing. All franchises will be able to use the same system, allowing passengers to buy a single ticket for their journey even if they use more than one network.

Passengers will also be able to buy tickets with only seconds to spare before their journey simply by sending a text message from their mobile phone.

Masabi, the mobile phone applications company that developed the standard with the Rail Settlement Plan, part of the association, is running trials of the new system with Chiltern Railway, National Express and the Heathrow Express. The association hopes that more rail operators will now adopt the standard.

The application, which will work on 90 per cent of mobile phones - including models that are up to seven years old - allows the ticket to be ordered and paid for on the user's credit card by text message, employing the same security used in online banking.

“The application sits on your phone,” Ben Whitaker, the chief operating officer of Masabi, said. “You enter Station A to Station B, say that you have a rail card and so on. It's just like a ticket machine in your pocket.”

The information is sent in a text message and in return a barcode is sent to the passenger's telephone. Customers need to type in their credit card details the first time that they use the system. After that they just need to tap in the three-digit security number on the back of the card.

Ticket inspectors will be able to read the barcodes using special ticket readers and some stations, including Marylebone in London, have installed barriers that read the barcodes, with more due to be introduced as the service is extended.

“In the past, trials have been small-scale because they were limited to a single rail operator and a single trip, and passengers had to buy tickets in advance over the internet,” Mr Whitaker said. “It was never going to make great inroads into people's lives, partly because 88 per cent of tickets are sold at the station, not in advance or online.

“The new barcode contains enough information and security for people to buy them immediately before travel and step right into the train. When you're running across the station platform, running to get your train, you can buy a mobile ticket and hop straight on.”

Steve Pickman, the association's head of strategy, said that the timeframe for widespread adoption of the system depended on how quickly rail operators choose to adopt the standard.

The developers of the system say that they expect “the most forward-thinking operators” to have the first live mobile phone ticketing systems up and running in the first quarter of next year.

Mr Whitaker said that mobile phone ticketing had also been tested in Germany by Deutsche Bahn but that Britain was the first country to have a truly open security standard. “Germany has one franchise and one technology, whereas the UK has many,” he added.

He also emphasised that one of the most important elements of any digital mass transport system was how it coped when things went wrong, and when the internet, database or server connections failed. “The new barcodes contain enough ticket and security information to be scanned even if the system is down. They do not need to be connected to the central server. This also means that guards can scan the barcodes if they are in a tunnel when they have lost connection.”

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