Installation will take about three years, so SEPTA riders won't immediately shift from their current tokens, passes, tickets, and cash.
Bus and subway riders will get the new system first, by late 2013. Regional Rail will make the switch a year later.
"Regional Rail will be the challenge," SEPTA board chairman Pasquale T. "Pat" Deon Sr. said. He predicted the new system would be more convenient for riders and would save SEPTA money.
Deon said SEPTA would push ACS to meet the deadlines called for in the contract so the new system isn't plagued by the kind of lengthy delays that have dogged the rollout of SEPTA's new Silverliner V railcars. The contract calls for financial penalties if ACS does not deliver on time.
"We'll have our foot on their throat," Deon said.
ACS has installed more than 400 fare-collection systems, including in Montreal, Lyon, Paris, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Houston, Cleveland, and Charlotte, spokesman Kevin Lightfoot said.
The company also has a pilot smart-card project on six NJ Transit bus routes in North Jersey and New York.
The company may be most familiar as the operator of electronic-payment systems on about half of the nation's toll roads, including E-ZPass systems in New Jersey, New York, and Maryland.
SEPTA will be among the first transit agencies in the nation to install an "open" fare system that allows riders to use any contactless bank card instead of a "closed" system that accepts only cards issued by the transit authority.
By opting for an open system, SEPTA is gambling on a future still taking shape.
Right now, only 10 to 15 percent of the 750 million credit and debit cards in the United States are contactless, equipped with a computer chip that communicates with a card-reader.
