July 27, 2006
OTI Global Wins Contracts For Contactless Transit Payments
OTI Global's Polish subsidiary won a tender with the city of Warsaw, Poland to provide contactless payment cards for transit and parking. The company had also won a similar contract with Israel, in June 2006, for their mass transit system.
Interestingly, their website does seem to mention the term RFID. (Many of their site links are not currently functioning, so I could not do a thorough check.) Their technology is based on the ISO 14443 standard for "proximity cards" and the ISO 7810 series of standards for ATM and similar convenience cards.
There has been previous controversy in regards to the DHS (US Dept of Homeland Security) claiming that ISO 14443 cards are not RFID. This letter from EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) points out that this is an incorrect notion also put forth by a C|Net writer. ISO 14443 is simply a different application of RFID, and supposedly designed to have a limited read range.
OTI Global (NASDAQ: OTIV) has previously installed contactless payment systems for gas stations in Peru, and was one of four vendors selected by the US government to test RFID passports.
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