Ticketing medium

Depending on the characteristics of the ticket issuing system, a variety of ticket media may be used. Unsophisticated systems may simply require the paper or card-based ticket media used by the transport operators to be made available to the sales agent who issues the tickets at face value and validates them [either with a provided mechanical machine or with a date stamp] with the date of issue.

The date of issue may be the same as the date of travel validity or other travel date validities may accrue to different ticket products. This approach requires careful ticket stock control as well as secure holding of the media, as pre-numbered tickets already have a face value.

In other cases, a dedicated travel token (jeton) may be purchased for use in coin-operated fare validation equipment. This enables the continuation of that methodology even where inflation has resulted in coins being displaced by currency notes for the values required for fare transactions.