Who Has An Accord Card

To date, the Accord Scheme has delivered in excess of 63,000 smartcards. These have been distributed to secondary school students attending schools in Aberdeen and to everyone over 60 or with a disability, entitled to Scotland Wide Free Bus Travel Concessions.

Pupils attending an Aberdeen City Council secondary school will be automatically entitled to an Accord Card, as an Accord Card is required for cashless catering, or to gain entitlements to free school meals. A few schools also have vending machines which use the Accord Card.

Pupils are also able to take advantage of all the or the Young Scot Discountsavailable, in shops and stores throughout Scotland. They just present their Accord Card, at the cash till of the participating organisations.Discounts

Eventually every citizen of Aberdeen will be entitled to apply for an Accord/National Entitlement Card. We will adopted a phased approach to the delivery of this smart card.

Phase One has been:

• School pupils aged 12 to 18 years old in local and non-local authority schools.
• Aberdeen City Council residents who are female aged 60 and over or male aged 65 and over.

Phase Two will be:

• The issuing of the upgraded version of the Accord/National Entitlement Card. This new card uses JAVA technology, but all the existing benefits will still be accessible with the new cards.

The migration from the old Accord Card to the new JAVA card will be a steady process and will also herald the introduction of Access to Leisure entitlements.

This phased roll-out will begin about September of 2007.