Giesecke & Devrient Wins Sesames Award 2008 for NFC-enabled SIM Card
Munich, Paris, November 4, 2008 – Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is one of the winners of this year’s Sesames Awards, presented on the occasion of the CARTES & IDentification exhibition and congress in Paris. The company was nominated for its contribution to the Touch&Travel project in the transport category. Jointly initiated by Deutsche Bahn, Vodafone and T-Mobile, the Touch&Travel project enables travelers to use their mobile phone in place of a conventional ticket for public transportation. Before boarding, users register for their trip by passing their NFC-enabled cellphone in front of a reader integrated in a so-called Touchpoint. The end of the trip is registered in the same way. A background processor calculates the price of the journey on the basis of the registration data, and displays it on the cellphone. G&D received the Sesames Award for its ProxSIM NFC-enabled SIM card, which has been used in this project for the first time anywhere in the world as a secure storage device for a ticketing application. Touch&Travel has been operating successfully as a pilot project since February 2008. The operators intend to recruit up to 2,500 test customers for the second stage of the pilot project.
“This award is testimony to our company’s innovative strength,” commented Michael Kuemmerle, Head of the Cards and Services business unit at G&D, proudly. “Touch&Travel will make it even easier for people to use public transportation. This high-tech solution will enhance the daily lives of thousands of consumers.”
The e-ticketing solution implemented in the Touch&Travel project is based on a new technology known as near field communication (NFC), which permits contactless data transmission between electronic devices over a distance of a few centimeters. The ticket data are securely stored on the cellphone’s SIM card. G&D’s ProxSIM NFC-enabled SIM card is equipped with a standardized single-wire-protocol (SWP) interface which enables the SIM card to communicate with the NFC controller in the cellphone.
G&D will be presenting the Touch&Travel project at the CARTES & IDentification 2008 exhibition in Paris from November 4-6, 2008 (Booth 4 L 001, Hall 4).
About Giesecke & Devrient:
Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) is a technology leader in the field of smart cards, providing smart card-based solutions for telecommunications, electronic payment, healthcare, ID, transportation, and IT security (PKI). G&D is also a leading producer of banknotes and security documents and is dominant in the field of currency automation. Based in Munich, Germany, the G&D Group maintains subsidiaries and joint ventures around the world. In fiscal 2007, the Group employed close to 9,000 people and generated revenue of more than €1.5 billion.
For more information, visit our website at www.gi-de.com.