Smart card applications: from automatic fare collection to customer relationship management

The implementation of the contactless smartcard (known as EZL card) for public transportation ticketing in Singapore is one of the largest of its kind in the world. To date 7 million cards have been issued with daily average usage of 1.2 million cards for about 4 million rides on public transport daily. The current smartcard system is based on proprietary first generation technology and card dependent. Singapore plans to move to a multiple card issuer environment and correspondingly on open standards. This will provide consumers with more choices and allow innovations such as deployment of chip technology onto watches and phones. An integrated ticketing system where a commuter enjoys transfer rebates when changing from either one mode of transport or operator, has led to wide acceptance of the card. This pervasiveness of the card has provided an impetus to its use beyond public transport such as for in-vehicle units in cars used for road pricing, car parks, terminals in retail and other non-transit applications will have a common reader hardware platform. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E213744.