Railways to use NXP’s smart ticketing tech

New Delhi, Aug. 13 NXP Semiconductors on Thursday announced that its microcontroller-based chip technology ‘MIFARE DESFire’ has been selected by the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to power contact-less smart cards for automatic fare collection using Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) across various cities.

Indian Railways, one of the largest and busiest rail transport networks in the world — carrying over 18 million passengers every day — would utilise NXP’s technology solutions to improve the overall passenger experience and drive operational efficiencies. On a global basis, 75 per cent of all electronic tickets in public transport use NXP MIFARE technology.Launch in 5 cities
The next generation ATVMs are slated to be rolled out across five cities — New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune. Together with card and inlay-manufacturer Siepmann’s Card Systems, NXP would provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs for about 6.5 lakh contact-less cards over a period of one year. This project is expected to go live in September 2009 and will initially be rolled out in two cities.
The technology enables a higher level of security and also has the future possibility to support multiple applications, Mr Ashok Chandak, Senior Director – Global Sales and Management, NXP Semiconductors India, said.
The Smart Card ticketing solution developed by CRIS using NXP’s technology is based on the international ISO 14443A standard.