Transit Fare Collection System : Blockchain-Assisted Payments System for Public Transport

Modern urban transit systems require fare collection architectures that can operate reliably under high passenger volumes, intermittent network connectivity, and diverse payment environments. Conventional fare collection systems, which tightly couple station-level access control with backend authorization and external payment networks, often introduce operational complexity, infrastructure cost, and performance limitations. This report presents an account-based transit fare collection architecture that separates access control from financial processing and settlement. Passenger devices and transit-issued NFC tags act as identifiers rather than value-storing instruments, while monetary value and fare logic are managed centrally through a digital transit payment platform. Station infrastructure is limited to deterministic data exchange and local event recording, enabling offline-capable operation and reducing reliance on complex, payment-certified hardware. The architecture supports heterogeneous fare media, centralized policy evolution, and auditable settlement through a distributed ledger, while minimizing the operational burden on critical transit infrastructure. By shifting complexity away from stations and into centrally managed cloud systems, the proposed approach addresses key requirements of scalability, resilience, and long-term maintainability in large urban transit networks.