e-Smart, day 2. François Guillaume, from RATP, presented the status of RAPT’s use of Java Card for Navigo [Gui06]. Navigo is RATP’s transport smart card program. RATP has issued millions of these contactless cards. Today, Navigo is mostly used for contracts, i.e., monthly transport cards, but their objective is to use is also for individual tickets.
The interesting thing with RATP is that issuing cards is not their business, and represents a cost for them. They woud therefore be wuite happy to move from card issuer to application issuer. In order to reach that objective, they are looking at other smart card programs, but also at different form factors: mobile phones equipped with a contactless interface could be used, like it is alreaady done in Japan; USB keys equipped with a contactless chip could also be used. In all cases, the application must be portable and protocol-agnostic. For this reason, RATP has performed some trials with Java Card.
The first identified issue was performance. However, initial trials have shown that several cards already achieved sufficient performance. The next issue is the management of applications, which need to be loaded on the card with specific tools.
Another advantage of the new form factors (phones, USB keys) is that the customers can directly connect to RATP reloading server in order to buy tickets or renew contracts. Testing these features is the goal of two ongoing pilots on mobile phones: one using a modified SIM with a contactless interface, and one using a contactless interface present on the chip.
All this work is very exciting. The first reason is that RATP would be happy not to be a card issuer any more, and they would accept not to have their logo on a card that contains their application. This is a very important first step: the next one is to find card issuers that will accept to host a RATP application on their cards. I am quite convinced that some issuers in Paris will be interested, because RATP’s service could be a competitive advantage for them. We’ll see.
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