6,000 Arcontia contactless smart card readers to be used in Nautiz eTicket PRO PDAs for Dutch Railways

ARCONTIA, a Swedish producer of contactless smart card readers and terminals, today announced that their embedded contactless smart card reader, designed for the Nautiz eTicket Pro PDA, is to be used by Dutch Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen – NS).

The Swedish company, Handheld Group, was awarded the PDA contract to supply Dutch Railways (NS) with more than 10,000 rugged Nautiz handhelds, of which 6,000 units are the Nautiz eTicket Pro including the embedded Arcontia contactless smart card reader. The combination of the smart card reader and the PDA provides train conductors with a lean and rugged mobile device for ticket control, travel information and support workflow processes.

The ISO 14443 A/B smart card reader from Arcontia is based on Arcontia’s latest contactless smart card reader platform, the 1300 series. The reader is fully integrated into the PDA, without any hardware changes to the PDA ergonomics, thanks to the unique design of the smart card reader and antenna.

“The Nautiz eTicket Pro provided the best of two worlds for us; a powerful PDA platform integrated with the latest generation Arcontia RFID module,” said Jasper van Zanten, NS Business consultant.

The Arcontia reader is the latest in Arcontia’s growing line of contactless smart card products, designed for e-ticketing and e-payment markets. In addition to the MIFARE family, the Arcontia smart card reader product family supports Smart MX and several other smart cards used in cashless ticketing and payment applications. To this, the smart card reader platform incorporates up to 4 high speed SAM slots (Secure Access Module) and the reader software supports the latest MIFARE AV1 and MIFARE AV2 SAMs from NXP.

Arcontia has more than 15 years experience in the field of contactless smart card reader technology, and has won numerous tenders for mobile ticketing worldwide. This is the second time that Arcontia will supply Dutch Railways (NS) with PDA contactless smart card readers.

Additional information on Arcontia’s activities in public transport

Arcontia is involved in a number of international ticketing projects across the world for which the company offers ticket validators, on board computers, add value machines, PDA readers and embedded smart card readers. In addition to this, Arcontia offers an extensive reader and terminal software support package.