SMARTRAC joins OSPT Alliance as full member

MUNICH, GERMANY & AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS: The Open Standard for Public Transport (OSPT) Alliance announced that SMARTRAC, a leading developer, manufacturer, and supplier of RFID components for a broad range of applications has joined the OSPT Alliance.

As a full member of the Alliance, SMARTRAC will participate in the Alliance's activities around the development of next-generation transit fare collection systems based on the CIPURSE(tm) open security standard.

"We recognize the OSPT's mission and the work of its members to establish CIPURSE as the first, open global standard for next-generation transit fare collection," said Wolfgang Schneider, member of the Management Board at SMARTRAC. "CIPURSE represents a critical opportunity for the transport ecosystem to move to next-generation fare collection systems, and we look forward to working with industry partners in OSPT to achieve these goals."

The CIPURSE open security standard addresses the need by transit authorities for future-proof fare collection systems with more advanced security than currently in use. Because it is an open standard, CIPURSE promotes vendor neutrality, cross-vendor system interoperability, lower technology adoption risks, higher quality and improved market responsiveness, all of which result in lower operating costs and greater flexibility for transport system operators.

CIPURSE also offers a global basis for a faster transition of transit fare systems to the use of emerging NFC mobile phones and other devices, and support for the adoption of NFC transit applications for a truly future-proof solution.

"We are pleased to welcome SMARTRAC as the newest member of the OSPT Alliance," said Laurent Cremer, executive director. "SMARTRAC is a key supplier in the value chain in the transport industry and will be an invaluable resource to our members as we work to establish the benefits of an open approach in public transport systems throughout the world."