NXP upgrade SPTrans with its MIFARE Plus

As such, it has a crucial need for an efficient and convenient public transportation system. The city government is taking great strides to improve the way people use public transport across São Paulo, based on a new cost model that takes both the route and time into consideration, with NXP’s smart technology at the core.

SPTrans is managing a large and growing network, assuring connectivity. The Bilhete Unico smart card today is based on MIFARE® Classic technology with about 40 million cards deployed since its launch in 2004, with seven million users on regular basis, 10 thousand recharge stations, and more than 340 million transactions per month. Prior to upgrading its existing ticketing system, SPTrans needed to address a number of challenging considerations, including the level of security needed; optimizing costs of the system upgrade; identifying which parts of the existing infrastructure should be updated, and when; assuring system reliability during the migration; and enabling compatibility with future extensions such as NFC solutions.

“We have done intensive technology assessments prior to our decision for the MIFARE Plus migration platform.” said Adauto Farias, Economic and Financial Management Director at SPTrans. “The new concept will definitively manage more than thirty Government social programs and enable service extension such as bike rentals, extended bus integration and the possibility to store biometric data.”

“Transport operators in Los Angeles, Moscow and St. Petersburg have already decided to use MIFARE Plus for their systems.” said Ulrich Huewels, vice president and general manager, card security business line, NXP Semiconductors. “NXP not only contributes the technology platform consisting of the core elements in transport cards, readers and mobile devices, but also the expertise over the decades in successfully supporting operators with system evolutions.”

NXP MIFARE Plus is based on open global standards for both air interface and cryptographic methods. It is available in two versions: MIFARE Plus S, the Slim version, for straightforward migration of MIFARE Classic systems; and MIFARE Plus X, the eXpert version, which offers more flexibility to optimize the command flow for speed, privacy, and confidentiality.