APTIS was the Accountancy and Passenger Ticket Issuing System used on the British Rail/National Rail network until 2007.^{[citation needed]} It was originally called "Advanced Passenger Ticket Issuing System" as it was being developed at the time of the Advanced Passenger Train.^{[citation needed]}

It was widely known as the All-Purpose Ticket-Issuing System, a description which was used during the development of the prototype devices.^[1][2]

It led to the introduction, on the national railway, of a new standardised machine-printable ticket, the APTIS ticket, which replaced the Edmondson railway ticket first introduced in the 1840s.

APTIS issued impact printed tickets on credit-card sized card ticket stock, with a magnetic stripe on the centre of the reverse which could be encoded to operate ticket barriers; it could also use plain non-magnetic ticket stock.^[1]

APTIS could issue receipts for passengers paying by debit card or credit card.^[1] These receipts were a combination of a transparent carbonless copy paper top copy, for the customer; and a backing card, for retention by British Rail. The customer signed the receipt, handed it back; and, in return, was given the signed top copy and the train tickets.

APTIS was derived from a private venture ticketing system, the General Purpose ticket-issuing system, developed by Thorn EMI in 1978.^[1] It had 25 kB of memory.^[1]

British Rail invited 23 firms to tender for a ticket-issuing system and Thorn EMI was successful.^[1] The first prototype was installed at Portsmouth & Southsea on 11 November 1982.

APTIS, along with the portable system PORTIS, was adopted as part of British Rail's £31 million investment, which was authorised in 1983.^[3] The production APTIS machines had 300 kB of memory; this could be upgraded to 500 kB.^[1]

Some 2,971 APTIS machines were scheduled to be installed at 1,600 staffed British Rail stations between August 1985 and September 1987.^[1][2]

The first production APTIS tickets were issued in October 1986 at stations including Didcot Parkway and Abbey Wood; the official launch was by Transport Minister David Mitchell at the British Rail Travel Centre, Regent Street, London, on 18 November 1986.^[4] The first ticket was sold at Benfleet in January 1987.^[5]

In 1988, the last of British Rail's Edmondson printing presses, located at the Paper and Printing Centre, Crewe, shut down.^[6] The last station to sell Edmondson tickets prior to full APTIS conversion was Emerson Park, on Network SouthEast's Romford to Upminster Line, on 29 June 1989.^[7]

APTIS survived in widespread use for twenty years, but in the early 2000s was largely replaced by more modern PC based ticketing systems although some APTIS were modified as APTIS-ANT (with no obvious difference to the ticket issued) Oyster card compatible machines in the Greater London area.^[8] The last APTIS machines were removed at the end of 2006 as there was no option to upgrade for accepting Chip and PIN credit-card payments. The last APTIS-ANT ticket to be issued in the UK using one of the machines was at Upminster station on 21 March 2007.^[5][9][10]