From paper to advanced electronic ticket inspection in Iceland

Greater Reykjavik Transport is the leading transport company in the Icelandic capital. Having used paper-based tickets for many years, the company wished to introduce a self-service system using electronic admission control and thus also open up opportunities for obtaining more and better statistical data. This is being done in collaboration with Smartkort, Iceland.

From 42,000 to 160,000 cards
Since its founding in 1996 Smartkort has been responsible for innovative and pioneering access to electronic business applications and has thus been in the vanguard when it comes to the development of smart card technology in Iceland. The task itself began with comprehensive analysis and concept work carried out by Smartkort. Based on the results it was decided to implement plastic card-based admission control, which besides 120 town buses would also comprise 39 state schools and seven places of entertainment. Smartkort’s main task was to implement a card solution based on external hardware, applying the latest technology to software development. "Our system supports contactless cards, the so-called “Mifare” cards (Mifare Classic and Mifare Ultra Light). We have just delivered the first 42,000 cards, which will be issued in the course of the next three months. Looking further into the future, we predict a total volume in 2007 of 160,000 cards," says Smartkort’s COO, Gunnar Geirsson.



Digital technology with new possibilities
“At Smartkort we have developed an entirely new system, which has a far wider range of possibilities within digital technology than have the electronic ticketing systems we have been familiar with before, simply because we do not distinguish between traditional and electronic tickets,” Gunnar Geirsson tells us. Through the present implementation of Iceland’s largest and most advanced system for the sale and distribution of digital smart cards, Smartkort is not only serving buses, schools and places of entertainment but also mobile phone operators such as Vodafone. “At present we are working on implementing a sales network comprising home-banking portals, local post offices, news agents’ and supermarkets. Within this growing network, card products purchased on the internet can be transferred to these smart cards in news agents’, supermarkets and at post offices,” says Gunnar Geirsson. Smartkort has developed software for equipment for admission control, card printers, news agents’, and mobile equipment for e.g. PDAs and other WinCE/XP/W2k based equipment.

XPonCard as card supplier
“We are extremely satisfied with XPonCard as card supplier. We chose XPonCard as collaborative partner because we found that this company offered a more varied product than did its competitors, primarily because XPonCard is constantly updating its production facilities with the latest technology", Gunnar Geirsson says in conclusion.