Winners of the MIFARE Awards

 

Big thank you to all participants and congratulations to the winners of the MIFARE Awards!

Below you will find the list of winners in the categories “Coolest MIFARE application in use”

and “Most innovative idea for new MIFARE applications, services or products”.

 

Coolest MIFARE application in use

Place 1: SM Lifestyle Entertainment

e-Plus Tap to Pay

is based on MIFARE DESFire and basically used for retail payment and is being expanded to cater for the other services that SM currently offers. Cashless commerce provides convenience while allowing our customers to enjoy discounts and perks alongside the use of the cards. For the cinemas, a loyalty program is in place providing its patrons to earn points for every ticket they buy and free movies and freebies. The vision of e-PLUS Tap to Pay is to promote a cashless community through a card that is tagged as “Tap to Save”. Not only is it a payment mode but also a loyalty wallet in one card. In terms of reloading, cardholders have multiple options such as Automated Teller Machines, e-PLUS booths present in all cinema and SM Malls, select partner merchants and via the air or mobile reload. There are already 2,000 readers deployed since its launch in June 2013. In less than a year, we have already 800,000 cards in circulation and is targeted to reach 1.5M cards by December 2014. As for the additional readers, we are looking at 5,000 to 6,000 by end of the year. Future plans about a nationwide roll out of the payment and loyalty applications are in place.

Place 2: Microtronic US

Microtronic

has incorporated it´s Microtronic MIFARE reader into a Self-Check-Out Micro Market that allows users to add funds to their card with Cash or Credit Card and then utilize the card to make purchases. This new application can replace Vending Machines in a main breakroom and add our Micro Market with display shelving to resemble a “mini” Convenience Store within an office building, factory or school – virtually any closed site location. This will allow operators to have Vending Machines with our reader in satellite locations within the same facility and use the Mifare Card or Sticker at both. Micro Markets have become a growing trend in the United States and Microtronic is the only company that has the capability of using the same MIFARE media at both Micro Market and Vending. The Micro Market concept allows consumers to read packaging ingredients and nutritional information, along with a much wider product selection than what is typical, and limited, in a Vending Machine. Operators log in using their dedicated web portal to pull reports, such as Products Sold, Transactions, Totals, Inventory, among others, which allows the Operator to “pre-kit” his Micro Market in-house, to replenish the market location. Many Operators have seen sales increase by as much as 35%. There is a monthly fee for the web portal and technical support, but it is nominal compared to the return on investment.

Place 3: Sky Highways

The MIFARE Conductor App is a Smartcard fare validation for transit agency employees.

The Sky Highways

MIFARE Conductor App is designed for use by Public Transit Agency fare collection and customer service employees. Designed for simple “one tap” use, the application takes the complexity out of smartcard fare validation. The MIFARE Conductor App provides an alternative to proprietary hardware handheld smartcard scanners and can be run on the latest cost effective consumer smartphones. The MIFARE Conductor application supports existing stored value contactless cards from multiple AFC System vendors based upon MIFARE DESFire. The application displays tickets and passes, electronic stored value balance, plus proprietary transit information and transaction history records. When combined with our public transit mobile application, there are over 100,000 daily users of our NFC based products.

Most innovative idea for new MIFARE applications, services or products

Place 1: Fidesmo

Fidesmo

is making SmartMX cards smarter by connecting them to the cloud through the technichal functions of MIFARE4Mobile and APDU library. We start with tickets for public transport. With our service, you can just hold the card to your phone to see what’s on the card and then top it up. That means that you can buy tickets whenever and wherever you want. For public transport organisations, this means that every smartphone becomes a sales channel. Additionally, people have to buy new cards in every city they visit. With the Fidesmo Card, they can use one card for all cities connected to the Fidesmo service, and download the appropriate ticket/pass when they arrive to the city. This means that the convenience increases for the end-user and the public transport operator benefits from substantial cost savings. It is a win-win! And lastly, with our innovative platform approach, the Fidesmo Card becomes a computing platform for anyone to use, opening up the SmartMX platform for completely new and innovative services never before envisioned.

Place 2: Mopius

In the last decade technological advancements have shaped the way humans learn and process information.

Mopius´

PLEARNING utilizes proven digital learning techniques and combines it with NFC and speech technology to enable a whole new way of learning a language: Proximity Based Learning.

The following use case shall describe how the system could support a learning person. Martha is a mother of two young children, manages the household and she also does own her small bakery. She always wanted to learn Spanish for many reasons but she struggles with the traditional ways of learning a language such as studying books. Her time is very limited so she can’t visit courses on a regular basis. This is where PLEARNING comes to rescue because the process of learning Spanish seamlessly integrates into her everyday life. Martha installed the PLEARNING app, which comes with a basic learning package for Spanish. Because she wants to start with a topic she’s the most familiar with she also bought a separate vocabulary package for the kitchen via In-App purchase. With this package she also ordered 50 pre-written NFC-Tags (PLEARNING Tags) that got delivered the next day. Each NFC Tag represents a real object in the kitchen. Ranging from a refrigerator to an egg timer. Martha just has to stick the tags to the appropriate objects to start the learning process. The next morning while preparing a lunch-meal for her children Martha uses her mobile phone to learn specific vocabulary. While taking the milk from the refrigerator she taps the refrigerator with her mobile phone, which then tells her the vocabulary for refrigerator in Spanish. She repeats it and moves to the next object such as an egg timer. Step by step she remembers the objects she’s dealing with. Constant repetition ensures a high success rate. The app collects statistics about the learning process and steadily increases the difficulty level. For example, if Martha taps the refrigerator once again her mobile phone doesn’t say only the word “refrigerator” in Spanish, but teaches her an applicable sentence such as “This refrigerator is running out of milk”. Martha soon knows her way around the kitchen in Spanish and decides to move on to the next domain-specific learning category: the living room. To do that she simply purchases the next package via In-App purchase and the process starts again.

Place 3: Alexander Nischelwitzer

Blind-Taggy is for orientation and navigation for blind people. NFC Tags are placed on special points on bus stations, pedestrian crossing, etc. NFC enabled phones enable blind people to get “exact location based” up-to-date information for example when the next bus is coming and where it is going. The information where blind people have to go in an underground station to find the next train can be also added.