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"ERG’s Singapore Project Wins Prestigious Sesames Smart Card Award
ERG Group today announced it has been awarded the Sesames for Best Transportation Application of smart cards for its Enhanced Integrated Fare System implemented in Singapore in 2002. The award was presented at the Villepinte Exhibition Centre in Paris during the Cartes and IT Security 2003 trade show.

The Sesames awards are presented annually as part of the Cartes and IT Security exhibition and conference, and are widely recognised as the highest accolade within the industry. The awards are decided by an international jury made up of smart card experts from the industry and specialised smart card journalists.

Sesames Best Application awards are presented in the following seven categories: IT Security, Banking/Finance, Health Care, GSM, E-Commerce, Customer Loyalty and Transportation. ERG received the transportation award ahead of Scottish company ECEBS for its work on the UK’s national ITSO standards; French company ASK for the Porto metro; and Portuguese company Octal, again for the Porto metro ticketing system which uses smart paper tickets.

ERG was honoured to head this list as it has worked with two of the nominees on the Porto metro system where it acted as a subcontractor to Octal while integrating the ASK smart card reader in ERG’s contactless validators.

Norbert Schüwer, General Manager ERG Transit Systems France, received the award on behalf of ERG and commented: “We are very pleased to have won this award. In 1998, ERG won its first Sesames award for Best Transportation Application for the Hong Kong transit system. This award proves that since then ERG’s technology has evolved and remains at the forefront of the industry. The system certainly has the capability to process more transactions than any of our previous installations.

“We are proud that our Singapore system has now been recognised by smart card experts as state-of-the-art in multi-application smart card systems. Our Singapore customer, the Land Transport Authority has shown vision in utilisation of leading edge technology to benefit its commuters and operators. It has been a very successful partnership with the customer, and of course the award would not have been possible without their efforts.”

Silvester Prakasam, Manager Fare Systems for Singapore’s Land Transport Authority said “The requirements of our system were very demanding and ERG has delivered a comprehensive system that meets the wide range of needs of both the transport operators and the commuters. ERG’s performance in meeting this challenge has been creditable and we believe this award is worthy recognition.”