Smart Transit is specialised on services in the area of Automatic Fare Collection (AFC). This technology aims on the implementation of tariffs products for public transport on an electronic basis in order to create more flexible tariffs and a more efficient distribution technique. Components of an AFC system are point of sales outlets, mobile POS, vending machines, inspector units, and check devices, which are connected to one or more back office systems. Apart from the technical components, an organisational structure, which is adapted to the operational work flow, constitutes another important part of an AFC.

Electronic tariff products such as season tickets, single tickets, or general travel permissions with payment methods like prepaid or post-paid, are stored on a smart card. Depending on the system design, the products serve for customer authentication or for admission authorisation via automatic fare collection up to the data acquisition for other services.

Optimal solutions depend on the basic conditions of each project or single enterprise. In order to create the optimal system design and architecture one has to consider

• the characteristics of electronic products and the possibilities of the tariff modelling,
• the view of the customer towards new products and the effects of new accounting and measuring procedures on them,
• the characteristics of the smart card technology as an important data storage medium,
• the information technology of the back office systems,
• the technical and organisational integration into the existing operator landscape, and
• the commercial constraints as parameters for economical efficiency.

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