(17 Feb 2021, 5:45 pm)streetdeckfan wrote To be fair, the Pop card is good for what it is. Which is basically a contactless bank card. You just top it up and pay.
Other than getting a Metro season ticket, there's nowt else it does.

I never understood why GNE didn't just work with NEXUS to allow tickets to be loaded onto a Pop card rather than having to have a separate Key card.

I'm sure Arriva and Stagecoach had their own separate smart card system as well. 

It would have made much more sense to have the one card that can be loaded with different tickets, like you say, you could load Network One tickets if you wanted multi-operator tickets.

All the different schemes and dis-jointed approaches can be put down to one thing. Money.

There was a shed-load of it chucked to operators from central government and they all went their own way, launching their own schemes.

I've shared some of the figures handed out elsewhere on the forum and it's mind boggling. 
There was no incentive at all to go for the joined up approach. 

Quite why tap on/tap off has taken so long, is anyone's guess. I think Adrian mentioned oyster being around for over 10 years.
I remember using tap on/tap off on the trams in Amsterdam before then too.