PARIS - Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, a business unit of global technology services company Schlumberger Limited, today announced that the TranSys consortium is deploying Schlumberger Easyflow contactless smart cards for its groundbreaking London transport ticketing and payment program, Oyster.
Annual and monthly season ticket holders are already using the Oyster service - the first of its kind in the UK - to travel across the UK's capital city. Oyster cards are now available to annual and monthly Travelcard and Annual Bus Pass holders via the Internet. The rollout will be extended later to include 7-Day tickets and a pay-as-you-go facility, Pre Pay.
The Schlumberger Easyflow cards, which use Mifare contactless chips, help speed the movement of ticket holders in a system that services around six million users a day, since travel details can be validated by simply touching the card on a reader. Once issued, cards may also be reloaded for further periods of travel, and provide customers with greater purchasing flexibility. In addition, greater security is available, as registered Oyster cards can be hotlisted if lost or stolen.
The use of Easyflow cards in one of the largest contactless ticketing systems in the world further positions Schlumberger as the ideal partner for card deployment in large transport projects. One of the most ambitious city transportation infrastructure schemes in the world, Oyster is ultimately expected to handle five million daily transactions, and as such sets a model for urban travel in the 21st century.
"We have harnessed experience gained from cities including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Hong Kong to take integrated smart card travel to a new level," said TranSys Marketing Director Nicole Carroll.
"TranSys has risen to the challenge presented by what is arguably the most famous and complex transport system in the world and used it as an opportunity to showcase our skills and experience. Oyster is a groundbreaking initiative which raises the benchmark for all other transport smart card systems. In delivering it we have proved that TranSys is spearheading the development of integrated smart card travel across the globe, showing our commitment to achieving client objectives and delivering a system which we hope will have strategic significance for London's transport network in the future."
Howard Berg, UK & Ireland director at Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals, added: "We at Schlumberger are proud to be a part of Oyster, a project that clearly increases efficiency and convenience for citizens. Londoners will appreciate the smart card technology benefits when traveling throughout the city."
Smart card security, flexibility and convenience enables electronic ticketing to serve as a foundation application for many more complex programs - such as expansion projects which combine transport with parking and e-purse facilities, and multi-application city cards.
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About TranSys
The TranSys consortium, led by EDS and Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS), has developed London's pioneering Oyster system using their knowledge and experience gained from other systems around the world including cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong.
About Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals is the world's leading provider of microprocessor cards (Gartner 2003, Frost & Sullivan 2003) - the key to digital networks - and a major supplier of card-related terminals and transaction software. Its 5000 employees serve customers in more than 100 countries, with worldwide sales exceeding 2.6 billion smart cards to date. The company has more than 20 years' experience in smart card innovation and leads its industry in security technology and open systems.
Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals continuously creates new generations of products for use in a variety of applications in the telecommunications, finance, retail, transport, entertainment, healthcare, personal identification, information technology and public sector markets. Smart card solutions provide convenience, security and privacy to public and private services operators, their customers and end users.
For more information, visit us at www.smartcards.net
For further information, contact:
Richard Venturi
Schlumberger Smart Cards & Terminals
Tel: +33 1 46 00 71 04
RVenturi@montrouge.sema.slb.com
Arnaud Malherbe
Herald Communications
Tel: +33 1 47 42 92 76
amalherbe@herald-com.fr
© Press Release 2006
