Contactless Breeze Blows Across Atlanta’s MARTA

Andy Williams writes for SecureIDNews about MARTA's new smart card-based fare collection system that in the final stages of launch. The MARTA system, built by Cubic Transportation Systems, is the first U.S. system to deploy both limited use smart card paper tickets along with conventional plastic smart cards - both using different flavors of Philips MIFARE chips. Williams quotes Neil Poling, program manager at MARTA, who says ""one of the disappointments in the whole smart card deployment efforts with MARTA and across the country has been the reluctance of banks and card associations to become involved. There have been a lot of promises and a lot of discussion from banks on where we go with stored value, but it's never comes to fruition. When we got into this, we were very excited about the possibilities, becoming partners with banks and card associations, but they've been extremely cautious about getting involved."