Liverpool Football Club joins smart Football Club Set

- 50,000 Liverpool Football Club Members have been issued with contactless smart cards that will replace traditional paper tickets and season ticket books enabling quicker and easier stadium access.

Inside Contactless announces that its partner, Fortress GB fully integrated multi-application smart card solution enabling clubs to better control stadium access, together with e-purse, loyalty and various other applications all designed to enhance the Club-Supporter connection.

The new system, installed at Anfield Stadium, uses Fortress’ secure smart card application and Inside Contactless’ technology [PicoPass [tm] ] to electronically store the cardholder records onto what looks like a normal credit card. This season, the system has been “rolled out” on a pilot basis to get the Club and Fans comfortable using the new technology. Each Liverpool Football Club Fan Card contains details of the cardholders’ seat entitlement with ID information.

LFC wanted to ensure that their Fan Card would work as a means of identifying supporters when purchasing tickets for Premier League, Domestic and European Cup games. Integrating the new technology into the Club’s ticketing software meant this aim was achieved and the Ticket Office now relies on the Fan Card as a means by which supporters can buy tickets for these games.

Eventually Fan Card Holders will be able to enter the stadium without first needing to visit the Ticket Office to collect their ticket. The system will recognise the Fan Card holder as someone who has purchased a match ticket and allow access into the stadium.

The Fan Card is multifunctional, and as well as being able to control access to the stadium it also contains e-purse and loyalty applications that LFC can integrate into packages that season ticket holders receive in the coming seasons.

Key technical features of PicoPass are:

- 16Kbits of memory available for applications demanding quite a large memory capacity.

- Capability to operate at proximity [10 cm] distance at up to 424 Kbits/s speed using ISO 14443B standard for very fast access time and at vicinity [exceeding 1m distance] distance at 26 Kbits/s speed using ISO 15693 standard.

- Automatic detection of the communication standard enabling mixing of both communication modes within the same application.

- Flexible and configurable file structure with mapping of 8 independent 2K-bit pages or a single 16K bit page with personalisation capabilities.

- About Inside Contactless:

Inside Contactless is a pioneering semiconductor company 100% focused on the development of contactless products and markets. The company is a leading supplier of contactless chips and readers, offering a range of solutions for emerging markets like transport, access control, payment, identity, and electronic identification. Inside Contactless acts as a one-stop shop for its customers by providing a complete contactless technology platform. Headquartered in Aix-en-Provence, France, and with offices in Shanghai, China and Greenville [Delaware, USA], Inside Contactless works with a worldwide customer base including system integrators, VARs and application developers. For more information, visit the company’s web site at http://www.insidecontactless.com/.

- About FortressGB:

Fortress GB is a UK based developer and provider of cutting edge, versatile, multi-application smart card solutions. The company’s expertise in cryptography and high secure crypto smart cards positions it perfectly to deal with projects requiring high level, multi-function access control systems. The company is providing the hardware and software for the project.Inside Contactless  CONTACT:

Please contact: Geraldine Sauniere, Inside Contactless, Tel: +33 4 42 39 63 00, E-mail: gsauniere@insidefr.com, http://www.insidecontactless.com/, James Rosenthal, Fortress GB Limited, T: =44 [0] 207 637 7876, E: james@fortressgb.com, http://www.fortressgb.com/

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