NXP builds on transport ticketing leadership to enable smart mobility future 28. January 2015

The Transport Ticketing Global 2015 Conference and Expo is one of the year’s biggest highlights in the ticketing industry. At the gathering, experts from across the globe share their insights into how transport infrastructures can evolve to be made smarter and more efficient.

High on the agenda is how cities can move beyond just cashless ticketing solutions for transport to incorporate other functions such as museum entry, bike rental or parking – true smart mobility. To make this a reality there needs to be a widespread embrace of flexible multi-application cards that can be used for a range of different services.

NXP leading the way

NXP Semiconductors is at the show demonstrating the MIFARE® DESFire® EV2. The innovative product is the first kind to seamlessly incorporate multi-applications on smartcards after issue, without recalling current cards in the field. This kind of flexibility gives card issuers the reassurance that they can make improvements even after rolling out a scheme.

The new solution builds on NXP’s history of innovation and leadership in the ticketing industry. Analyst’s ABI recently released figures showing NXP with a combined memory and microcontroller share of more than 70 per cent – NXP calculates that this rises to 77 per cent when the disposable ticket market is taken into account.

NXP also topped the innovation and implementation categories in ABI’s latest transportation and Ticketing IC Competitive Assessment. ABI reported strong volume growth for NXP in the microcontroller segment of 16%. NXP´s memory IC market share is more than 50% above its nearest competitor. NXP remains the unrivalled leader in the transport ticketing industry.

Transforming Ljubljana

Andre Perchthaler, Global Product Marketing Manager of Smart Mobility, NXP spoke at the event in London and gave the audience a real life case study of what impact smart mobility can have. Until 2009 public transportation in Ljubljana, Slovenia, had essentially remained unchanged and was still based on coin tickets and cash payments.

The municipality initiated a new project – URBANA. The aim was to provide better combined ticketing and parking payment experience. The Urbana Single City Card can be used on Ljubljana city buses, cable-car rides to the Ljubljana castle and for parking fees.

The system based on MIFARE DESFire is supported by POS terminals for ticket recharge at various points of sale across the city and a back-end central processing system and database. Users have benefited from quick, safe and simple ticketing. In the future the scheme will be extended to include public libraries, sporting facilities museums and galleries amongst others.