Digital Opal Card rollout set for tail end of this year

A digital Opal Card rollout is expected to kick off by the end of this year as NSW moves through $567.9 million worth of transport upgrades.

Outgoing NSW minister for customer service and digital government, Victor Dominello posted a short update on the trial which will allow commuters to add a virtual Opal card to digital wallets on their devices.

“At the train station this morning - there are still many people using their plastic opal cards - presumably people keep plastic cards in their wallets,” Dominello said.

“Whilst you can tap on with your digital credit card - many would still prefer a digital Opal card - for example school students who cannot access credit cards.

“I am informed by Transport [for NSW] that the trial of the digital Opal card went well and that they are aiming to implement rollout of the digital Opal card end 2023 [or] Q1 2024”.

Responding to comments to his post, Dominello said that Transport for NSW had "decided that the digital Opal card product needed more work and this would be better accomplished as part of the Opal Next-Gen program,”

“This is an infrastructure led project focusing on the ticketing infrastructure," he wrote.

In June last year, Treasurer Matt Kean announced a further $567.9 million transport ticketing upgrade as part of the its ‘Opal Next Gen’ program, designed to implement the digital opal card.

When a digital Opal card was tested by more than 10,000 people back in 2021, over 300,000 trips were taken.

In the same LinkedIn post, Dominello also proved an update on the state’s digital driver's licence.

The NSW government recently partnered with the federal government to allow NSW digital licences to be stored in the myGov app.

Dominello said there’s been a 78.65 percent up take of the digital driver's licence, equating to a total user base of 4.4 million people.