Inertia by transport companies is the only thing stopping the use of Smartcards for corporate travel.
The claim came from Jeremy Acklam, project manager for IT company Atos Origin and an expert on the introduction and use of Smartcards for travel.
He told BTE: "The technology exists for post-pay smart Cards for corporate travellers. They could use the same card to pay for air or train travel and in London for travelling on the Underground.
"Their company could be sent the information of when, where and how they travelled and how much they paid. The travel policy of the company could be loaded so the travellers could comply with it. So if they were only allowed to travel second class, the card would not allow a first class ticket.
"The only thing that is stopping this is, shall we say, the inertia of the transport companies."
Mr Acklam who recently formed a consortium to push for the implementation of Smart Card travel in the UK, said the concept was not so much ticketless travel and the card would be the ticket but paperless travel.
Earlier in a presentation to the first Rail Revenue Management and Pricing conference organised in London by the software company Manugistics, Mr Acklam too much of travel was "discontinuous" with different organisations owning the trains, stations, airlines, airports, the roads and car parking facilities.
"The solution is to build around the needs of the customer," he told more than 50 delegates representing train operators from across Europe.
Instead of getting reliability, accurate information, quality service and value pricing, they were getting confusing pricing, the involvement of many different companies and paper ticketing.
"One of the biggest benefits of Smart Cards is that they can convey customer choice,” he said.
"They can be multi-functional and there is no limit to the type of information you can put on a card."
He said in the short term they were likely to be only for season tickets, but longer term they would be post-pay and usable for corporate travellers.
* See BTE Analysis