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Ticketing is related to the cash-register principle. A ticket is a reciept that verifies entitlement to some sort of rationed service. People typically get tickets by paying for them, although it is not uncommon to have queues controlled on a first-come first served basis by ticket. In principle people could pay for a service at the point of delivery - paying the train guard, bus driver or cinema usher. The ticketing mechanism splits payment for a service from delivery. People concerned with delivery don't have to worry about verifying cash or giving change, accepting credit cards or issuing eceipts - the ticket says it all. One purpose of a ticket is that it is easy to inspect and verify, so it is usually a card in coloured or eadily recogniseable material overprinted with information about the service and data for which it is valid.
Where a till-roll is fairly anonymous and it wouldn't greatly matter if a customer tried to forge a receipt a ticket can be worth quite a lot of money. Tickets tend to be quite robust, which may make direct thermal printing impractical. Thermal transfer can work well on stiff materials and so can some kinds of dot matrix. Historically, ticketing printers were usually specific to the job. Trains, cinemas and theatres had a machine built into the cashiers counter. Bus conductors had a machine with several coloured rolls of paper. Shop queues had a machine with numbered tags - some still do.
Ticketing can sometimes work in reverse, although it rarely does. Macsween's butchers shop in Edinburgh used to issue customers with a ticket. The butcher sold what was wanted, then the customer went to the cash desk where the ticket identified the customer and they were charged accordingly.
Ticketing printers can do other things beside merely making the ticket. Material can be supplied on a roll that runs out when all the seats are gone, preventing overcrowding. Different coloured tickets can indicate different classes of service - types of seat for instance. These days intelligent behaviour will tend to depend on support software rather than on stationery and printer.
High value tickets may be more valuable than currency and need similar protection using special techniques and stationery.
Euro notes are said to have as many as 90 anti-forgery measures according to the ECB.
Some characteristics have to be evident - watermark, metal strip, hologram and irridescent markings.
Less obvious measures include micro-printing that can only be seen under a microscope and markings that only show up in flourescent lightthat should be
RFID chips are one way to protect tickets and are likely to become commonplace.