Smart Cards, Smart Phones and a Cashless Society

MTA Pilots GPS Tracking on City Buses

August 13, 2010

Contactless News - New York’s MTA is piloting GPS tracking technology on city buses, allowing passengers to receive updates on their bus’ status via mobile phone or at the bus stop, according to nyunews.com.

The new system will get its data from passenger’s smart fare cards. Each time a user taps his or her smart card against a fare box, the time and location data of the transaction is sent to a central server, which uses the information to determine the position of the bus.

So far eight MTA bus routes have been outfitted with the new smart card system.

“The purpose of the pilot is to test the technology on several fronts, mainly interoperability and performance of equipment and software, cards and readers, and bus and subway in terms of availability, speed and processing/aggregation rules,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told NYU News.

Vix ERG Supplies Bolzano, Italy's Buses with Contactless Readers

August 13, 2010

Contactless News - Australian-based Vix ERG has been awarded a 1.7M Euro contract to supply its new range of iVal products to the city of Bolzano, Italy for its public transit system.

Vix ERG will deliver 1,050 magnetic and contactless V6000 validators and 630 contactless CP6500 validators to the city to enable more efficient ticket and smart card issuance, smart card loading and fare processing on buses, station platforms, point of sale sites and ticket offices.

The platform is based on ERG’s Viper card reader family and provides support to a future upgrade path to NFC and EMV.

“This supply is of great technological importance to the Provincia di Bolzano, who are completely rethinking the current fare structure and are expecting to introduce a new check in/check out system early next year,” said John Ottaviani, Vix ERG’s Technical Manager in the region.

Report: Contactless Smart Card Demand to Surge in APAC

August 19, 2010

Contactless News - Demand for contactless smart cards in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is expected to take off in 2012, according to a new report from Frost & Sullivan. The research firm says completion of several key government-led projects will trigger the growth, including NFC, e-passports and mass transit.

According to the report, shipment of contactless smart cards to the region is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4% from 590 million in 2009 to 1.9 billion units by 2016, generating revenues of approximately $2 billion.

“The world is already prepared to roll out NFC commercial projects with a small number of commercial projects having already begun and more than 200 pilot projects already completed across the globe,” Reuben Fong, research director at Frost & Sullivan. “In Asia-Pacific, we can expect large-scale mobile NFC deployments in the next one to two years.”

According to Fong, these NFC deployments will generate public interest in contactless bank cards, further driving up demand.

Additionally, India, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are all set to implement e-passports within the next five years, and smart card-enabled mass transit projects are on the rise across APAC.

Transport for London (TfL) Explores New Ticketing Technology to Complement Oyster Smartcards

August 17, 2010

Contactless News - Transport for London (TfL) is looking into new ticketing technology for London’s bus, rail, tube and river boat network, according to transportxtra.com.

Cubic Transportation, which recently signed a new three-year contract to supply all ticketing services to TfL, said it would explore newer and more convenient technology to compliment its popular Oyster cards.

“TfL and Cubic will now work together to investigate the future potential for Oyster to be extended to new and existing technologies and the commercial opportunities that provides,” Shashi Verma, TfL’s director of fares and ticketing said.

New, more convenient ways to pay public transport fares are set to be developed for London's bus, rail, tube and river boat network. With the commencement of its new three-year contract to supply all ticketing services to Transport for London, Cubic Transportation said new technologies would be explored to supplement the current Oyster smartcard.

"As well as the ongoing management of Oyster, we are excited about the introduction of new technologies, which will give public transport users even more choice for their ticketing requirements and make using public transport in the capital even more convenient," Steve Shewmaker, president of Cubic Transportation Systems said.

The new contract covers provision of revenue services, ticketing, information, gates and fare collection. It replaces the contract previously held by the Transys consortium in which Cubic was one of the lead partners. In 2008, TfL announced that it would be ending the contract five years early in 2010. The new arrangements will save it £10m/year.

"TfL and Cubic will now work together to continue the success of Oyster, including investigating the future potential for Oyster to be extended to new and existing technologies and the commercial opportunities that provides," Shashi Verma, TfL's director of fares and ticketing said. "TfL has already undertaken a trial of Oyster on bank cards and mobile phones, but now that we have complete control over the Oyster brand we can investigate options that make life easier and more convenient for Londoners to travel while also increasing the accessibility of Oyster."

Buscor Taps ACS for Contactless Ticketing System

August 20, 2010

Contactless News - Buscor, a South Africa-based bus operator, is partnering with Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) to roll out a new contactless ticketing system in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, according to Engineering News.

ACS will install its Atlas contactless ticketing system on roughly 400 buses across the province, which services about 160,000 passengers daily, says EN.

Under the new system, passengers pay for rides with the wave of a contactless fare card, which in turn relays real-time transaction information to Buscor.

ACS will also install South Africa’s first touch-screen driver consoles in Buscor’s buses, according to EN.

RF IDeas Launches Reader for Physical Access Control

August 20, 2010

Contactless News - RF IDeas has announced the release of its new pcProx Enroll reader for physical access control.

According to RF IDeas, the reader is compatible with more than 300 million physical access proximity cards, allowing employees to use their building access card for other forms of identification and security throughout the workplace.

The plug-n-play reader requires no software for deployment, and is available either embedded in a keyboard or through standard wedge-type housing.

Other features include flash memory and standard USB drivers supplied by operating systems such as Windows or Mac.