HEADLINE NEWS
Germany: Pioneering NFC Transit Ticketing Project Expanded
Six-month trial allowed preregistered users to tap NFC tags encased in plastic “ConTag” disks at 59 transit stops and stations in the city of Frankfurt and the nearby airport. Tapping automatically loads a preloaded Java midlet on the phone and enables users to buy single-use or other low-cost tickets in thee clicks. RMV officially expanded the trial in Feb. 2008 to 750 stops as part of a move toward rollout. A later announced offshoot of the trial in 2008 stored the ticket in the embedded secure element of the phone.
RMV held the world’s first NFC-based ticketing trial in early 2005 and is one of the first to try to rollout the technology anywhere. It wants to support Germany’s interoperable transit application, and expand to its 5-million population service area. It also intends to put its application on a secure element to sell higher-value tickets and passes and enable conductors to check tickets by tapping their own NFC phones against rider NFC handsets. But for the service to take off it will need phone shops to stock a much better selection of handsets. Yet, the authority has demonstrated transit operators and their ilk can successfully use NFC in reader mode to deliver tickets over the network without installing an expensive network of ticketing machines and gates.
82% of respondents said they would recommend the NFC ticketing service to their friends. More than half of survey respondents said they would have wanted more ConTag touch points. 25% of surveyed consumers said they use services more often because of the NFC phones, according to RMV research; 73% said they use them about the same as before.
* Trusted Service Manager: Defined loosely to include companies or other organizations securely distributing, provisioning and managing applications, generally over the air, on secure elements in NFC mobile phones; or licensing their platforms for this purpose.
N/A: Not available or not applicable.
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