In an attempt to cut down on the ever-increasing fraud by passengers and staff, more and more high-capacity railways are installing automatic fare collection, commonly known as AFC or, in some places ARC, automatic revenue collection.  AFC has two advantages: It automates the ticket accounting and selling processes and it can give detailed data on system usage.  It also reduces ticketless travel, although it never eliminates it, and it allows more revenue to be collected without employing an army of staff.

The elements of AFC are:

• Ticket vending machines (TVMs), where passengers can buy a ticket for their journey.
• Ticket office machines (TOMs), used by railway staff to issue tickets at stations.
• Add value machines (AVMs), where passengers having a stored value ticket can increase the residual value.
• Faregates, which form a barrier between the “unpaid” area of the station and the “paid” area where passengers must possess a valid ticket.  The faregate will read and release the gate when a valid ticket is presented.
• Tickets, which come in several varieties (according to the system in use) but which all have an electronically encoded data content indicating the validity and/or use of the ticket.
• Website marketing and selling.
• Smart card, credit/debit card and smartphone ticketing.
• A computerized accounting and management system, which consists of a station computer for each station and a central computer linked to all the stations.
• The AFC elements are all linked electronically so that each transaction is recorded and can be accounted for against sales income.