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| Subject: Seoul To Revamp Its Pioneering Chip-Based Transit Card | |
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Author: ( 2003-08-28 )June 2004 for the new collection system. |
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Date Posted: Tuesday, September 02, 01:41:51pm Seoul To Revamp Its Pioneering Chip-Based Transit Card Seoul, South Korea—The Seoul city government plans to choose a vendor consortium for its restructured chip-based transit fare collection system by mid-September, Chung Yong-sik, a team leader in the city’s information department, tells Card Technology. Two consortia, each headed by a Korean conglomerate, LG Group and Samsung Group, are frontrunners for the massive project. The planned "SS Card" will not only allow commuters to pay fares in contactless mode on both subway trains and buses, but could eventually carry nontransit applications, including a credit program that complies with the international EMV standard. Seoul already runs what is considered the largest chip-based fare collection system in the world. But the 7-year-old system was also one of the first of its kind to launch, and is costly to run. Among the problems: The city’s many bus operators developed a separate fare collection scheme from one launched by four train operators; the city must continue to pay substantial royalty fees to technology vendors, which own the intellectual property rights; and the system uses a nonstandard form of Mifare contactless technology. As a result, the city, which subsidizes or owns the transit operators, decided to scrap the fare collection system and start again. SS (Seoul Smart) cardholders will continue to be able to post-pay their fares, says Chung. At present, about 55% of 11 million daily commuters post-pay, using credit cards containing contactless antennas and chips issued by Kookmin Credit Card Co. or other financial institutions. Among its other distinctions, this makes Seoul’s the only major fare-collection system that permits post-payment. But, instead of the credit application residing only on a magnetic stripe, the new cards will likely carry dual-interface chips, which can operate in either contact or contactless modes. The contact portion of the chip would carry the EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) application, and probably one of South Korea’s several electronic-purses. Of the two vendor consortia, one insider gave LG Group the edge, in part because it proposes to use Mifare technology--a later version included in the major international standard for contactless cards, ISO 14443. This consortium also reportedly includes Kookmin. Samsung Group plans to use another contactless protocol, known as type B, which its semiconductor division produces. This protocol is also part of the 14443 standard. Chung says the city has an ambitious launch schedule of June 2004 for the new collection system. ( 2003-08-28 ) [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |