Athens Urban Transport Organisation has partnered to create a fare collection system that simplifies commuting and makes public transportation more accessible.
The Greek capital of Athens is rolling out multimodal, contactless payments to improve the public transport experience for both locals and tourists travelling in the city and the metropolitan area.
Athens Urban Transport Organisation (Oasa) and its selected suppliers have collaborated to create a fare collection system that simplifies the daily commute and makes public transportation more accessible.
Contactless deployment
In the first phase of the deployment, riders on the bus airport line from Athens International Airport will be able to pay for their €5.50 flat fare using a contactless bank card or a mobile wallet. This will be swiftly followed by a full rollout across the city’s metro, tram, trolleybus and bus services.
This project has been a collaboration with transit payments processing specialist Littlepay, Visa, Cybersource and Planeta Informatica, working closely with key stakeholders such as the National Bank of Greece, HST, LG CNS and Asis.
The implementation is an example of how a virtual secure access module (Vsam, which enables transit validators to accept Eurocard, Mastercard and Visa or EMV payments) deployment can breathe new life into older card readers and reduce both capital cost and the time to rollout. The savings in this case were considerable given Oasa runs nearly 8,000 validators across the city.
Planeta’s VSAM is a small modular add-on that slots inside existing validators to “switch on” open loop transit payments. This can be achieved without major changes to the existing validator hardware or software, reducing reliance on the existing terminal supplier. The physical rollout is then reportedly a simple job of opening the validator and slotting the VSAM chip in.
Littlepay’s role in the project was initiated in mid-February with the first rollout going live to the public 10 weeks later.
“There were many stakeholders involved in this deployment that had to work together to make Oasa’s vision come to life,” said Sheryll Ricketts, solutions consultancy lead at Littlepay. “I am proud of our team and our partners who have pulled together to launch the solution in record time. Hopefully, this will pave the way for many more projects in Greece.”
Kang Sok Kim, software architect of IT services company LG CNS, said: “LG CNS closely collaborated with our partners for the successful rollout of the first phase of the implementation. We are confident that citizens and tourists will benefit from the upgraded experience of traveling within Athens Metropolitan area, after the completion of the project at the end of 2024.”
Littlepay and Planeta have a long-standing relationship, having collaborated previously on similar open-loop projects in Peru and Costa Rica.
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Quelle/Source: Smart Cities World , 03.05.2024
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