Contactless Smart Cards, RFID, Payment, Transit and Security

INSIDE Contactless powers cashless payments at Thailand school

Monday, September 8, 2008

The International School of Bangkok in Thailand has tapped INSIDE Contactless to implement the school’s first cashless payment system. INSIDE partner Vertical Payment Solutions has integrated the CAMPUS payment application into the identity cards carried by students and staff, which enables them to tap their smart cards to buy food at the canteen, purchase uniforms and stationary, make photocopies, print documents and purchase items online or from campus kiosks. Parents can also add funds to accounts, set daily spending limits and monitor student activity such as tracking attendance or banning certain food items to promote healthy eating.


Based on INSIDE’s PicoPass contactless memory technology, the CAMPUS smart card stores the cardholder’s personal information and provides access to a cash value that can be topped up using payment gateways integrated into the CAMPUS Online web page or from cash acceptors built into the CAMPUS kiosk. The CAMPUS payment arrangement allows schools to participate in the program at very little setup cost, and once the system is operational it is self-funding. The Australian School in Singapore, the first to use the CAMPUS system, has been set up as a showcase for the CAMPUS solution.

“INSIDE has worked very closely with Vertical Payment Solutions as our partner for this project to help adapt our PicoPass cards for a variety of proximity and vicinity contactless applications within the campus and to ensure that our various reader solutions provided the performance and security required for each application,” said GOH Say Yeow, executive vice president of sales and managing director for Asia Pacific at INSIDE Contactless. “PicoPass is the open-standards solution of choice for dual protocol (ISO 1443-B, ISO 15693) use in a broad range of low-end ID, access control, stored value and other applications, and we are excited to have it play such a pivotal role in this cashless campus payment system.”

“With more than 1000 students and staff converging on the canteen at meal times, long lines at the cashier were commonplace, but now a quick tap of the CAMPUS Card is all that’s necessary to purchase a meal, relieving this congestion while helping us reduce our administration costs by eliminating cash from the canteen,” said Stephen Lehmann, director of information technology at the Bangkok school. [end] 

Superdrug, one of Britain’s largest beauty and health retailers, has introduced contactless payment for its in-store customers, according to Retail Gazette.

Created by Streamline and Visa Europe, the contactless system will enable customers to make payments of up to £15 (approx. USD $23) by simply waving their contactless bank card at the more than 50 participating Superdrug stores in London and Liverpool.

read more »

Personal information of 9,000 current and prospective students was inadvertently posted online by Valencia College in Orlando. The school has apologized for the mistake.

The information included the students’ names, addresses, dates of birth and student ID numbers but not their Social Security numbers or financial information.

read more »

The Peninsula Taxi Association (PTA) in South Africa has launched a electronic fare collection system, granting commuters cashless fare and discounts when using the newly developed contactless-enabled transit card, according to The Cape Times.

read more »

The European Payments Council (EPC) has published the second edition of its “White Paper on Mobile Payments.”

According to EPC, the white paper focuses on the usage of the mobile payments in the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) and explores how m-payment services can be delivered through cooperation between service providers in the payment industry and players within the mobile ecosystem.

read more »

A new survey from Euro Kartensysteme shows that Germans are starting to embrace the idea of contactless and NFC payments.

Out of 1,040 Germans aged 18-59, 43% responded that they would like to make contactless payments if given the opportunity, of which 58% percent would make their payments with a debit card card, 41% with a credit card and 50% with an NFC phone.

read more »

Identive Group Inc. has announced a deal to acquire a majority stake in Hamburg, Germany-based payment solution AG, a cashless payment system provider for stadiums, arenas and other types of entertainment venues.

read more »

Subscribe to the Contactless News Library
Gain access to the largest collection of Auto-ID analysis on the Internet.