Contactless technology and electronic wallet as basis of future proof city marketing solution

The “A-kaart” is a savings- and advantage card to stimulate participation in the cultural & free-time offering of the city. Meanwhile it will enhance the local community sense, A-feeling and will provide additional insights in behavior of the citizens and improve offering based on consumption analytics.

Consumers can buy a contactless A-kaart, save points when visiting city services and redeem coupons earned by touching A-kaart poles or at the point of sale. Different savings rules can be applied to different segments of the population.

Alcatel-Lucent and Proximity BBDO provide the end to end solution for the A-card, consisting of an electronic wallet for loyalty points and coupons, contactless infrastructure, a rule management system and program database with interfaces for consumers and administrators. The contactless infrastructure includes contactless cards for consumers, contactless readers for the various city service locations as well as NFC enabled readers for remote events e.g..

The “A-kaart” solution is future proof as it is compatible with the NFC (Near Field Communication) standard being integrated into mobile phones. Furthermore, the A-kaart is capable of serving as payment or public transport card over time.

The agility of the solution allows to launch in the near future additional services like the Antwerp City Card – a prepaid card for tourists, as well as it allows to replicate the program in other cities on the same platform.

The A-kaart has integrated the various programs for city services and city partners and has required extensive integration with 3^rd parties, as well as cross departmental cooperation between the city services. Consumers can use the integrated my A-kaart website to check the available loyalty points and coupons.

“Alcatel-Lucent was able to timely deliver an end to end solution and provided the required agility to address the evolving marketing concept and needs over time, says Ils Neuts, Marketing & Communication Director, City of Antwerp”

The A-kaart project implementation is a new reference for Alcatel-Lucent’s Mobile Wallet Service offering. Alcatel-Lucent Mobile Wallet Service provides mobile and contactless payment and marketing solutions to mobile operators and enterprises around the globe. Recent customer announcements include a.o. the Sanoma loyalty and prepaid pilot and the Vodafone UK mobile payment project.