Touch & Travel: Where your mobile phone serves as a ticket
With the new eTicketing System Touch&Travel from Deutsche Bahn (DB), the mobile phone serves as an electronic ticket on trains, buses, streetcars, subways, etc. The SIM cards inside the phones are provided by Giesecke & Devrient.
The Touch&Travel project is initiated by Deutsche Bahn, the German railway, and the mobile operator Vodafone. Giesecke and Devrient is involved as one technical partner supplying the Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled SIM cards.
Touch and Travel eliminates the need to purchase tickets prior to boarding a bus or train, making travel faster and less complicated as passengers will be able to use their mobile phone as a ticket. The ticketing information is securely stored on the cell phone’s SIM card and can be checked although the batteries have run down.
The technology behind, Near Field Communications, is a new short-range wireless connectivity technology that evolved from a combination of existing contactless identification and interconnection technologies. Products with built-in NFC will dramatically simplify the way consumer devices interact with one another, helping people speed connections, receive and share information and even make fast and secure payments.
And this is how it works: (separate box)
- By simply waving your NFC mobile handset over the so called Touchpoint before entering the train, located at the platforms, the system registers the beginning of a trip.
- The ticket is stored on the SIM card inside the mobile phone
- The conductor checks the ticket by scanning the phone with a portable reader.
- Having arrived at the destination, the handset is waved over the Touchpoint again. The system registers the end of your trip. The system processes the data and calculates the correct cost for the distance traveled.
- The passenger is billed once a month
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