Daily Eesti Päevaleht wrote on Thursday that the company is planning to make the change in several stages. As a first step, its online ticket portal will be updated, followed by new sales terminals for Elron's staff, and eventually by introducing ticket machines on trains.

The new online portal will make it easier to find different types of tickets, the paper wrote, for example by promoting multiple-ride tickets for specific price zones.

The update of conductors' sales terminals is necessary as the current system still worked without network access. One of the problems with the current offline system is for instance that if a passenger charges their ticket card online, this won't be reflected in Elron's systems immediately if the payment happened after the last synchronization of an offline sales terminal.

The ticket machines Elron is planning to switch to will still allow passengers entitled to a discount to select that option. Tallinners will be able to use their public transport card to ride Elron trains for free within the city's transport zone.

In the future a contactless payment system will be introduced as well. This will include Elron's electric trains, where so far card payments haven't been possible.

The company is also considering an app that would make it possible to get tickets with a very small number of steps.

Elron is the trade name of Eesti Liinirongid AS, the state-owned operator of passenger trains.