Creation Review

Calypso is a set of specifications describing a fast and secure off-line contactless transaction, between a portable object and a terminal. It has been created at the end of the 1990s by some european public transport operators or authority (RATP and SNCF in Paris and all France, STIB in Brussels, OTLIS in Lisbon, ACTV in Venice, Konstanz in Germany), in order to create an open , interoperable and secure standard independent from industrials to ensure a real competition.

Today Calypso represent 20% of the world market of contactless smart ticketing in 25 countries and 125 cities. It brings to his user a guarantee of security and interoperability which relies on a total compliance with existing standards  (ISO 14443, ISO 7816-4, Global Platform). The Calypso standard is managed by the Calypso Networks Association (CNA) , which is led by transports operators and public authorities in order to ensure openness and independence from industrials in confront of other proprietary schemes.

The openness for a contactless ticketing standard can be evaluated for the two mains components of ticketing systems, with the complementary concern about guarantee of security:

• Cards and portable objects (mobile phones, Java objects, wearables, …)
• Terminals (validators, vending equipment, …)

We can affirm that a real openness is achieved for cards and portable objects with the Calypso standard with a large choice of products and providers (card manufacturer, OS makers and chip providers) and a real competition between them.

However, for ticketing equipment the situation is more contrasted. In fact, if the Calypso specifications are open, the terminal applications operating ticketing data (contracts, pricing, user profile) which have to be implemented on top of a smartcard management layer are proprietary of a few ticketing integrator/manufacturer, and the networks who used this solutions may only manage evolutions in a “purchase by agreement” manner, with a direct impact on the price.

Furthermore, other mobility actors (Car sharing, bike sharing…) that would like to be integrated in the mobility ecosystem led by public transport operator would like to benefit of the highly secured Calypso transaction “as a service”, and consequently be ready for global integration without being ”killed” by complexity and security issues  that would oblige them to make too big investments.

In fact, from the very beginning, the scope of Calypso Networks Association is to promote the open standard  Calypso which has been originally designed  for Interoperability in transportation.  Nowadays, we are more talking about Mobility, including very different and new modes, and “traditional transport operators  are facing commercial and technical issues about providing a door to door seamless travel to their customer. Consequently, Calypso Networks Association, leaded by Public Transport operators, decided to develop and publish an Open Source SDK that could fit with any type of terminal and contactless reader architecture in order to facilitate and spread the adoption of the calypso standard. Thus new mobility actors, transport operators, Local authority will be able to focus on the travelers expectations, commercial agreements and new mobility programs development without losing time on technical issues or allowing smooth evolution of their systems.