What Is Cipurse™?

By Jean-Philippe Wolyniec, Marketing Working Group Chair at OSPT Alliance and Sales Director at FIME, and Myung-Hwa Calais, Director of Transport Unit at FIME

As services across transport ticketing, payment, loyalty and more increasingly converge, mobility service stakeholders are presented with a number of new opportunities to deliver better services, form partnerships and enhance revenues. But for many, the costs and complexities of upgrading legacy systems can slow innovation.

Open standards offer a compelling opportunity for many to fast-track their system upgrades and realize real cost and time savings. One such standard making significant progress in this space is CIPURSE™, developed and owned by industry association, OSPT Alliance. Comprising of members including public transport agencies, vendors, system integrators, software developers and government bodies, the organization’s non-proprietary open standard can offer a host of benefits to a wide range of mobility stakeholders.

With deployments taking off globally, and new applications for the specification emerging across industries, what is CIPURSE exactly? And, more importantly, why might it be worth considering for your projects?

 Introducing CIPURSE

Defined and sustained by OSPT Alliance’s membership, CIPURSE harnesses industry-proven standards, already adding trust to the world’s most popular payment types. These include ISO 7816, AES-128 and ISO/IEC 14443-4, creating an advanced and highly secure platform for defining new solutions. Amongst all open smartcard standards, CIPURSE is the one that defines a complete feature set readily usable by customers.

CIPURSE is most commonly discussed in relation to transport ticketing, and it’s widely recognized as ‘the’ standard for that market. But CIPURSE has applications that extend far beyond including ID, access control and micro-payments. It has advanced dramatically since its definition in 2010. Evolving in line with industry trends, the specification covers both Secure Element (SE) and Host Card Emulation (HCE) solutions. Importantly, it is fully form factor agnostic.

 Why consider CIPURSE?

Instant interoperability

The different functionality profiles of the CIPURSE standard interoperate seamlessly, and span continents and applications. System expansion is simplified and can be done at a pace defined by the solution owner. Whether that’s moving internationally, integrating new services or adding acceptance of new form factors.

 Super-charged security

CIPURSE has advanced security mechanisms, including a unique cryptographic protocol that encourages fast and efficient implementations. The protocols provide robust, inherent protection against Differential Power Analysis (DPA) and Differential Fault Analysis (DFA).

 Support next-generation technologies

CIPURSE supports a wide range of form factors including contactless cards, wearables and mobile solutions developed with both SEs and HCE. In the age of ‘tap-and-go’ payments, consumer demands are at an all-time high. This makes simplified integration of new technologies with a standardized platform a compelling option.

 Safeguard investment

The CIPURSE standard allows providers to future-proof their projects in line with long-term and unforeseen market developments. As the standard evolves, it remains back-compatible. What’s more, utilizing open standards opens up collaboration with any CIPURSE-compliant player, removing reliance on single vendors and encouraging healthy market competition and innovation.

With a broad scope of applications and numerous benefits, CIPURSE may just offer the secure, high performance platform needed to transform your projects. With over twenty years’ experience delivering innovative digital transformation projects, FIME can help you understand what standards and technologies are best suited to your project’s needs.

To support players interested in, or in the process of, implementing the CIPURSE standard, FIME has partnered with OSPT Alliance to deliver in-depth technical training. Find out more about the program and how you can register here.