Members of international association OSPT Alliance have cooperated on a project that will accelerate consumer adoption of near field communication (NFC) services and transform the way that contactless technology is used, by eliminating the complexities associated with traditional business models.
The Open Contactless Application Platform is a collaboration between Samsung Semiconductor Europe GmbH, EMoney Group, MS4B and ZeitControl, with support from Deutsche Telekom. Based on CIPURSE, the open standard from OSPT Alliance; the concept has been developed to offer service providers lower upfront costs, a reduced time to market and a faster return on investment when implementing contactless applications, through driving consumer acceptance of NFC.
As CIPURSE is operating system and form factor independent, the Open Contactless Application Platform can be applied across a wide variety of devices, including NFC-enabled smartphones, smartcards, wearables and other media types. The flexible platform can then be customized to support a host of consumer applications, such as transport fare collection, ticketing, coupons, loyalty, access and micro payments. By improving the end-user experience through a wide choice of form factors and the personalization of services, the OSPT Alliance members involved in this project believe that the platform will increase the number of consumers using contactless.
“The CIPURSE open standard offers interoperability, flexibility and security”, comments Laurent Cremer, executive director of OSPT Alliance. “As it can be used in all ecosystems and markets, independent of the hardware provider, our members believe CIPURSE is the ideal base for this collaborative concept. The platform was co-developed by dedicated OSPT Alliance members to address a key need within the market and to offer service providers real value on their investments. We are excited about the possibilities for the Open Contactless Application Platform in accelerating the use of NFC and contactless for consumer services.”
The platform has facilitated the creation of a number of innovative solutions connecting networks such as public transport – that are traditionally isolated and closed-loop networks – with other networks including cards, wearables, mobile applications and third party services. It has also enabled new solutions to be created and deployed in weeks, rather than months.
Laurent concluded, “OSPT Alliance’s working groups have launched system-level standard specifications, which can work in tandem with CIPURSE to support this platform. This has also empowered local communities of web and mobile application developers to leverage existing contactless infrastructures and to support use cases without barriers that are all too often faced with proprietary implementations. OSPT Alliance was founded to provide the industry with a truly open standard. We have built up a membership of leading technology companies who are all interested in pioneering an open, interoperable and flexible ecosystem. The co-development of the Open Contactless Application Platform between members embodies the mission of the association, to foster industry collaboration and create solutions which are truly market changing.”
