Paragon ID secures significant new contracts for its Smart Cities activity

Transport, security, smart mobility: Paragon ID works with more than 200 transit authorities and networks around the world and supports them as they transition into the Smart Cities of tomorrow.

Key player in the supply of access control solutions, Paragon ID has secured new contracts and renewed several others with Smart Cities around the world for the supply of access control solutions including smartcards, contactless and magnetic tickets. In parallel, the company is strengthening its position in the mobile ticketing area via its strategic partner airweb and future-proofing its Mass Transit solutions with the launch, this month, of its new Ticketing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offer.

Modern, secure and easily accessible transport is at the heart of Smart Cities’ development

Traffic, mobility and pollution are universal and growing issues for medium and large cities. The issue of urban transport is a priority in their development strategies to facilitate the mobility of their citizens. They need to rethink their transport networks, offer modern and secure means of transportation, develop new modes of urban mobility, promote their use and better facilitate their access. Paragon ID has built on its expertise in the Mass Transit market and on its experience in the latest technological advances - NFC, mobile applications and open-payment - to continue to offer innovative solutions, bringing answers to the challenges faced by cities, worldwide, as they prepare for the future.

Building on its leadership position in physical access control solutions

Paragon ID has recorded major new contract wins and several renewals over the last 12 months:

New contracts: Washington, Dallas, Indianapolis, Sonora, Doha, Rotterdam, De Lijn (Belgium);
Renewals: Los Angeles, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Oslo, Casablanca, Cairo, Santo Domingo, Nice, Montpellier and Toulouse.

These new business contracts are evenly spread throughout our strategic regions and sales organisations in the Americas, in the UK and in EMEA, combining to establish a leadership position in ticketing for Mass Transit as illustrated in key figures below

In addition, to complete its offer and to bring innovative answers to cities and transport authorities’ new key priorities in terms of ticketing and ease of access to public transport, Paragon ID has worked in the last 18 months to build a new service offering with leading solutions through strategic partnerships:

Account-based ticketing and mobile app - airweb
NFC platform for mobile app - Wizway
Open payment (hardware and services) - Ingenico

This strategic and collaborative work has resulted in the development of new technologies that are at the foundation of several new contracts and the development and launch of a new Ticketing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering.

Key successes in the mobile ticketing area

Since last November when Paragon ID took a strategic investment in airweb, both teams have worked together to develop the business and enhance the mobile app features.

Key new business wins include: CITURA (City of Reims), RTC (city of Quebec) and TEC bus (Wallonia, Belgium)
New enhanced features:

   - Special tariffs for concessionary schemes;
   - Modules for special events;
   - Origin to destination fare structure;
   - Connection with NFC capabilities issued from the Wizway platform.

This work has been rewarded by a key symbolic contract win with the announcement in the last days that the Centrale d’Achat du Transport Public (CATP – the French public transport purchasing authority) had selected airweb for the mobile ticketing app with QR and NFC connection mode.This latest success reinforces Paragon ID’s and airweb’s leading market position in mobile ticketing. Both companies are now in talks with many cities all over the world to deploy the solution.

Paragon ID launches its new Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering

To facilitate the transformation of the public transport offer towards more digitalization and a simplified use, Paragon ID launches its new offer of "platform as a service" mainly intended for small and medium cities.An "all-in-one" offer that aggregates all the ticketing requirements of a city transit network - equipment, software, physical & digital media and payment services – PaaS provides a real answer in terms of long-term support in the implementation of innovations for simplified access to public transport and new mobility.This offer, which is already attracting interest, will be rolled out in the coming months in the different markets in which we operate.

Clem Garvey, Paragon ID CEO, says:

« The latest contract wins for our physical access control products reinforce once again our leadership position in the Transport and Smart Cities market. It is great to welcome new cities to our portfolio and see historical customers renewing their trust in the company. At the same time, the successes we are enjoying with airweb for our innovative mobile ticketing platform confirm that the company has managed to anticipate the digital transformation that cities are currently undergoing. Finally, I am thrilled to announce the launch of our Ticketing Platform as a Service offering which is a testament to our R&D and commercial teams who continue to develop innovative solutions that fit Smart Cities’ changing requirements. We have already presented our PaaS to several cities and we are confident that we will start seeing the first contracts coming through before the end of this financial year, despite the long sales cycles in this domain. »