Indian Railways is all set to implement 'smart' ticketing at the stations across the country in order to reduce long queues at ticketing counters.

Under this scheme, India railways has decided to set up 6,344 Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs) at five major cities namely New Delhi, Secunderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Pune.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), the IT wing of the Ministry of Railways has developed the Ticketing solution using NXP semiconductors' chip technology called as MIFARE DESFire technology. NXP will provide MIFARE DESFire-based ICs, together with card and inlay-manufacturer Siepmann's Card Systems, for approximately 6.5 lakh Smart Cards over a period of one year.

This is very effective and user friendly technology, which is expected to begin from September 2009 and will be launched in two cities.

Mr. Ashok Chandak, Senior Director, Global Sales and Marketing for India, NXP said that a significant growth would be seen in the use of contactless Smart Card technology in transport systems in India.

CRIS had already developed the smart card based contactless solutions, which use NXP's MIFARE chip, in 2007, and was successfully implemented in Mumbai Suburban Railway and Chennai with around five lakh subscribers.