OSPT Alliance updates Cipurse transit ticketing specification

The Open Standard for Public Transport (OSPT) Alliance has released version 2.0 of its Cipurse open transit ticketing standard.

OSPT Alliance

Cipurse v2 “comprises a single, consistent set of specifications for all security, personalization, administration and life-cycle management functions needed to create a broad range of interoperable transit applications,” says the alliance, “from inexpensive single-ride or daily paper tickets to rechargeable fixed-count or weekly plastic tickets to longer-term smart card- or smart phone-based commuter tickets that can also support loyalty and other applications.”

“Today, transit operators wanting to offer new fare collection options, like the use of mobile phones, must choose from disparate product offerings that often don’t work together, increase the complexity of their fare collection systems and are quite costly because of the limited competition among vendors,” says Laurent Cremer, executive director of the OSPT Alliance.

“With the new modular, device-agnostic design of Cipurse v2, it is now possible for vendors to develop families of interoperable products from low to high end based on a single specification, enabling transit operators to easily mix and match applications as their needs change over time.”

“For integrators, Cipurse v2 means lower development costs and faster time to market, because they can apply a single set of standards to all of their products, from low to high end,” the alliance says. “For transit operators, Cipurse v2 offers the potential for greater choice among a larger ecosystem of vendors with lower costs, greater flexibility in designing and implementing fare collection systems and the benefits of open standards like Java Card and GlobalPlatform.”

Full Cipurse v2 documentation is available to download free of charge from the OSPT Alliance’s website.

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