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IBM provides true end-to-end value proposition for LTA Symphony e-Payment Infrastructure

"The IBM team will leverage the best combination of solutions, cutting-edge innovation and business methodologies, including IBM's HiPODs global innovation team in India, to support the Land Transport Authority." - Patricia Yim, Managing Director, IBM Singapore.

Overview

Customer:		Land Transport Authority
Deployment Country:		Singapore
Industry:		Government

Business Need:

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is the statutory board under the Ministry of Transport that spearheads land transport development in Singapore. In 2005, LTA embarked on a project to rebuild and revamp the existing fare system infrastructure which handles the end-to-end fare clearance of bus and rail networks via ez-link issued cards. The new system is expected to handle millions of transactions daily, with no loss of data as it clears through different tiers of infrastructure.

Innovation That Matters for Transport:

Leveraging on the the unique strength of the High Performance On Demand Solution (HiPODs) team from IBM India Software Labs in Bangalore, IBM Singapore demonstrated the team's commitment to be the technology and innovation partner of choice for LTA in creating high value-add, globally integrated on demand capabilities.

IBM's HiPODs team connects the expertise of IBM's top consultants, developers, engineers and researchers around the world and assists IBM's clients globally in architecting and developing high-performance, scalable technology solutions. The team also helps clients by developing and sharing development and design best practices and methodologies for high-performance solutions.

The key innovations of the infrastructure are an open standard technology platform to support transit and non-transit usage for different card applications, and architecture scalability and flexibility to adapt for business growth and new requirements. The high-performance, high-speed infrastructure also enables a fast data processing throughput rate of up to 650 transactions per second during peak hour operation and 100 percent delivery of data transfer among the processing systems.

On Demand Business Benefits:

The new system, called Symphony for e-payment or e-Symphony, will incorporate the Contactless E-Purse Application Standard (CEPAS). The CEPAS is a standard developed by the IT Standards Committee. With the rollout expected by the second quarter of 2009:

Contactless stored value cards from any vendor can be used at any contactless card reader. Thus CEPAS-compliant cards from other vendors such as Nets, will also be compatible with the LTA transit fare system;
Consumers could benefit from lower smart card costs led by increased competition expected in the smart card space.
The new infrastructure is expected to be able to handle double the number of transactions and up to 10 million financial transactions a day.