Indian Railways to implement 'Smart' ticketing

Bangalore: The Indian Railways has selected a chip technology by NXP Semiconductors, a semiconductor founded by Philips to power its contactless smart cards for automatic fare collection system. The secure microcontroller-based technology called MIFARE DESFire will be implemented across various Indian cities in the ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines).

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The user-friendly ATVMs will be rolled out across five Indian cities - New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune. Together with card and inlay-manufacturer Siepmann's Card Systems, NXP will provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs for approximately 6.5 lakh contactless cards over a period of one year. This project is expected to be launched in September 2009 and will initially be rolled out in Delhi and Secunderabad.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT wing of the Ministry of Railways had developed the ATVMs as part of an Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS). In 2007, CRIS developed the smart card based contactless solutions using NXP's MIFARE 1KB Classic chip in Mumbai Suburban Railway and Chennai. Over five lakh smart cards were issued to passengers in the Central/Western Railway at Mumbai and Southern Railway at Chennai.

Commenting on the implementation of smart card technology in India, Ashok Chandak, Senior Director, Global Sales and Marketing for India, NXP said, "We see a significant growth in the use of contactless Smart Card technology in transport systems in India." According to NXP, 75 percent of all electronic tickets in public transport worldwide use the NXP MIFARE technology.