Taxi passengers in 16 major cities in China's prosperous southeast coast will be able to use compatible smart cards for paying their fare electronically by 2010.

This was the latest drive for the economic area, better known in China as the Yangtze River Delta, to facilitate further integration and transport convenience, the China Communication News reported on Tuesday.

The cab administration authority in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, ordered all of its 7,500 cabs to install standardized electronic card readers. These were compatible to those mounted on taxis in both Shanghai and Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province that bordered Zhejiang, the newspaper said.

To date, more than 3,300 cabs have been equipped with the readers, allowing Shanghai and Nanjing residents to use their local electronic cards for cab payment. The two cities previously standardized their uniform cab payment system.

The easy-payment-with-same-card project was expected to expand to 13 other cities in the Yangtze River Delta, an area that accounted for about 19 percent of China's gross domestic product of 20.94 trillion yuan (US.87 trillion) in 2006. Residents in those cities frequently traveled to other places in the region for business and weekend excursions.

The payment system would include a computerized interface for financial settlement between different cities, the newspaper said.

Besides the cab service integration, electronic payment for express railways and fast pass facilities at highways have made inter-city travel much quicker and convenient.