Sony Contactless Smart Card Business

The historical launch of the first blue-line underground service system on July 3, 2004, inaugurated by their Majesties King and Queen was the memorable achievement of New Business Initiative Group, Mitsubishi Company (Thailand) Limited (BKK/NBI) in smart card business field.

Having a good business relationship with Sony Corporation in Japan, BKK/NBI and Business Creation Unit of Mitsubishi Corporation (TOK/EV-L), have succeeded in supplying Sony Felica products to this underground automatic fare collection system.

Unlike magnetic-stripe card, the contactless smart card helps passengers to be able to pass through the gates smoothly by its fast communication speed, as well as to freely refill the amount by both bank notes and coins at the ticket vending machines. The initial supply for the first year of operation is 200,000 contactless smart cards for stored-value tickets and 200,000 contactless smart tokens for single-journey tickets. Total transaction volume is approximately 105.5 million yen. It is estimated to have about 250,000 riderships a day.

Widely known as No.1 contactless smart card supplier in the world of transit application, Sony Felica products, nowadays, are not only being accepted and used by the transit operators in many countries, such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, China, etc., but also have been drawing high attention from non-transit operators, for instance, retail and financial sectors as well, due to its high performance in security transaction and multi-application features.

BKK/NBI's goal does not end at trying to secure more future orders of Sony fare media from the underground service system; however, we will also explore the opportunities of expanding Felica products to other transit and non-transit operators in order to realize the common ticketing network in Thailand.