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| Subject: Thanks Pork--I'm emailing this to Walt---SteveOctopussy | |
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Author: It has formed consortium with AccentureThalesMTRC |
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Date Posted: 21:53:14 01/29/03 Wed  pourquoi5 (ID#: 224751) For ERG Holders 30/1/03 11:30:38 AM 5980568 « Previous Message Next Message » From latest European Card review: Octopus spreads its tentacles Hong Kong-based Octopus has established itself over the last few years as the world’s most successful contactless card-based mass transit scheme. With transit possibilities saturated in its local market, it is looking increasingly to extend its Hong Kong activities into retail payments more generally, and to offer its expertise globally. Octopus covers Hong Kong’s buses, ferries, metro and trains. “There’s not a lot more we can do, except taxis, and we’re trialling with them over the next six months,” says CEO Eric Tai: “So we’ve moved from non-profit to a profit-making basis and we’ve applied for a limited banking licence.” The cards can already be used at merchant outlets around the transport hubs. Retail transactions average HK$20 (€2.50), says Tai: “They are 5% of value at present (and) we want to move that up to 10% by the year-end.” Unimpeded by data protection concerns, Octopus holds full records of every transaction undertaken on its network. It uses the data base to target customers with new services like insurance, which Tai forecasts to earn profits of up to $10 million within four or five years. Marketing, consulting and chip management are other likely diversifications. “There are a number of things we can do – but they must be related to our payments infrastructure and card interface,” Tai says. As an ex-general manager of HSBC and a main board director of Mondex International, he insists he is committed to working with the banks. “We hope to put our chip on their debit or credit cards some time this year,” Tai says. Plans have been delayed by the need to re-engineer Sony’s Octopus cards, because the contactless aerial cracks when the cards are embossed. More controversial are Octopus’s plans to sell its expertise globally. It has formed a consortium with Accenture, Thales and MTRC (the Hong Kong mass transit company and part-owner of Octopus) to tender for projects, including some in Europe – contactless-based schemes in Oslo, Copenhagen and the Netherlands. Among the contracts for which Octopus and its associates have tendered is the Dutch National Public Transport system, which is now down to a short-list of two – Cubic, EDS and Siemens in the My-Trans consortium and Accenture, MTRC, Thales and Vialis in the East West consortium. This means that the combination between Interpay and ERG, the Australian company (and owner of Proton World) is now out of the running. Octopus is potentially even better placed for an ambitious plan to implement a payments, access and ID scheme for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing – for which Tai acknowledges he will need to talk to Visa, as a sponsor of the games – based on a “showcase project” currently being negotiated in another Chinese city. However, these objectives are likely to run into strong opposition from ERG, which built the original Octopus system but which, according to Tai, “hasn’t been involved for some time.’ Commenting on Octopus’s plans to take its offer global, Proton World CEO Armand Linkens says: “There’s still a significant amount of our IP (intellectual property) in Octopus. There will be a big debate if they sell it without synchronizing their plans with us « Previous Message Next Message » This message has been viewed 18 times Report a BullBoards Violation Ignore pourquoi5 Post Reply View Threads [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Sony Mitsubishi ERG AES Prodata Hong Kong. | Sony Mitsubishi ERG AES Prodata Hong Kong. | 23:58:16 01/29/03 Wed |
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