Saturday, December 09, 2006

Infineon E-purse - ePayments News

Infineon Combines Contactless E-purse with Access Cards

Thales

Dec 06 2006 : Chip manufacturer Infineon has implemented a contactless e-purse payment system for 6,500 employees working at its new site in Munich, Germany. Staff have been issued with smart cards which carry both e-purse and security access information on the same Infineon chip, the firm says.

The chip is loaded with e-cash at a loading station and used at locations such as the canteen, food and drink vending machines, coffee machines, and the on-site hairdressers. These locations have been equipped with 140 contactless e-purse payment terminals from France's Thales. The 140 terminals between them process some 10,000 transactions per day, says Infineon. The canteen uses a cash register system from Schaupp along with Thales's AVT.compact payment terminals. Infineon has also installed AVT.compact terminals in food and drink vending machines.

Additionally, one hundred coffee machines have been equipped with the unattended Thales AVT.controller module, Infineon says.
The rollout of e-purse technology has been a success, with noticeably shorter waiting times at busy locations such as the canteen's cash registers, Infineon says. More than 90 percent of all staff payments at Infineon's Munich offices are now being made electronically, it says. "In the canteen, we are able to process six payments a minute," Wolf Ruediger Moritz, Infineon's Vice President of Business Continuity, says in a statement. "Even at peak hours, we no longer have substantial queues." Infineon was previously the semiconductor division of Germany's Siemens.

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