Rototype designs and manufactures banking automation and self-service kiosks customised to client needs. Since their beginning in 1962, Rototype have established a reputation for quality and customer-focused innovation. Demand for Rototype’s products from around the world extends across 60 countries, all served by the company’s operations based in Italy.

Claudio Santacesaria leads Rototype’s R&D team and pioneers new technologies to fulfil ever-evolving customer needs, while also ensuring his team delivers development projects to stringent quality standards.

A customer’s experience of visiting an attraction or event starts with their ticket – while some may want a printed ticket to keep as a memento, many will want the convenience of having a ticket on their smartphone.

The standard Apple Wallet and Google Wallet apps can store NFC-enabled digital tickets. NFC readers compatible with the Apple VAS and Google Smart Tap protocols can automatically request the correct ticket with just a tap from the phone, making entry many times faster and delivering a far superior customer experience – no need to open any app, search for a QR-code and present it for scanning.

Together with their partner VGS (www.vgs.com), who provide an innovative ticketing and visitor management platform, Rototype wanted their compact ticketing kiosk to be able to issue and manage NFC-enabled mobile wallet tickets, alongside the options for printed tickets and QR codes.

Rototype’s ticketing kiosk has to pack a lot of functionality into a small footprint, from taking cash and/or card payments, supporting a whole range of ticket issuing options, through to allowing existing customers to amend, add-to or cancel their tickets, as well as redeem vouchers and entitlements. Rototype needed a way of easily adding Apple VAS and Google Smart Tap capabilities to their kiosks while retaining options to use other ticketing media. Furthermore, the solution had to fit in the limited space available, be economic in their competitive market, and integrate well with their kiosk management platform as well as their client’s ticketing
solutions.

The VTAP50 NFC reader board is certified for Apple VAS and Google Smart Tap, and specifically designed for kiosk, vending and other applications where space is limited.

VTAP readers are also compatible with popular NFC tags and RFID cards to support mixed environments and to allow phased migration over time. Integration can be as simple as using the VTAP50’s barcode reader emulation mode, while more advanced functions, including firmware updates, can be achieved without any additional drivers, software or SDK. Both serial and USB interfaces are supported.

Customers with either NFC mobile wallet or physical RFID tickets simply present their phone or ticket to the Rototype kiosk to initiate a range of available actions. Services offered by the kiosk can include rescheduling or upgrading a booking, choosing a seat, or requesting a refund as well as allowing vouchers and entitlements to be redeemed.

The VTAP50 handles all of the security and decoding of both mobile and physical tickets, including support for multiple public/private key pairs for Apple and Google passes plus symmetric keys and access codes for MIFARE and DESFire technologies.

“The integration experience has been incredibly smooth thanks to a very simple interface and perfect documentation. Key loading, configuration and security have been made almost trivial for the user, despite the inherent complexity. Integrating RFID, NFC and Apple and Google wallets has never been so easy!”