Memory sticks just the ticket

The ancient city of Montpellier in the south of France is about to offer a glimpse of a near future in which we will carry our entire lives in small objects in our pockets.

The people of Montpellier will be able to pay for public transport journeys by waving a memory stick as they enter a bus or tram. The special USB sticks, on sale for €5 ($10), can be topped up online from any computer.

The project - the first of its kind in Europe - will be followed shortly by similar schemes in Grenoble and the suburbs of Paris. The French state railway, SNCF, is even developing a programme to allow commuters to download and pay for virtual tickets on their mobile telephones - something that already happens in Japan.

The French Government believes the memory stick will soon become an electronic identity card. It launched a programme early this month called IDENUM, which lets people transfer their multiple user-names and passwords to one memory stick, smart card or mobile phone.

The intention is to simplify electronic banking and shopping and make government welfare payments more easily accessible online.

The USB stick, which slips easily into a port on most computers, has already transcended its original function as a portable memory store. In the future, it could take over - or be combined with - the functions of the credit card, mobile phone and identity card or passport.

The cities of Bordeaux and Toulon are experimenting with shoppers paying through memory sticks for small purchases such as bread, newspapers or cigarettes.

Montpellier is considering whether the "bus-pass memory stick" could be used to lighten the heavy loads of schoolchildren.

"We could easily download on to the stick, say, all the books that students have to read," said Frederic Linossier, who developed the scheme.

- INDEPENDENT