Antoine Vilain to head OSPT

MUNICH, GERMANY: The Open Standard for Public Transport (OSPT) Alliance today announced the election of Antoine Vilain as the organization's next board president.

Antoine Vilain is product lines director (Payment and Transport) for the Payment Business Unit at Oberthur Technologies and succeeds Axel Lange of Giesecke and Devrient, whose three-year term has expired. In his capacity as president of the industry organization, Antoine Vilain will oversee the alliance's continuing growth and promote further acceptance of the CIPURSE V2 open security standard for next-generation transit fare collection systems.

Antoine Vilain said:"First, I would like to thank Axel Lange for the wonderful job he has done these past three years as board president in building and promoting the OSPT Alliance and the CIPURSE standard. Open standards are a necessary prerequisite for enabling new technologies to be deployed in transit fare collection systems of the future. Under Axel's leadership, the OSPT Alliance has made significant progress with the CIPURSE open security standard, in the evolution of the specification and in building interest for it in the market. My mission is to continue Axel's good work and see that the Alliance continues to grow and attract new members to participate in CIPURSE development, and to work with the members to accelerate market acceptance and advance more projects from pilot phase to full deployment."

According to Antoine Vilain, the open nature of CIPURSE promotes vendor neutrality, cross-vendor system interoperability, lower technology adoption risks, higher quality and improved market responsiveness, all of which result in lower operating costs and greater flexibility for transport system operators.

Designed with a layered, modular architecture and application-specific profiles, the open and secure CIPURSE V2 standard comprises a single, consistent set of specifications for all security, personalization, administration and life-cycle management functions. From inexpensive single-ride or daily paper tickets to rechargeable fixed-count or weekly plastic tickets, to longer-term smart card, or smartphone-based commuter tickets, that can also support loyalty and other applications, the CIPURSE standard can be integrated into a broad range of interoperable transit applications.

Organizations interested in joining the OSPT Alliance can visit the "How to Join" page on the OSPT Alliance website to apply.