The European Smart Ticketing Alliance will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2025. We at VDV eTicket Service have been involved from the very beginning.
In August 2025, the Smart Ticketing Alliance (STA) will celebrate its tenth anniversary. For us at VDV eTicket Service, this anniversary marks an important milestone in the development of interoperable ticketing systems in Europe. As a founding member, we have been involved in the STA’s strategic direction and technical work from the very beginning.
The STA promotes cooperation between national and regional smart ticketing systems and is committed to the implementation of interoperable ticketing solutions in Europe. It sees itself as an integrated platform for European transport authorities, operators, industry stakeholders and policy-makers. Its members include transport operators, transport associations, manufacturers and consultancy firms, who work together in working groups on topics such as account-based ticketing, a glossary, national digital ticketing and certification. In other words, precisely the areas we focus on.
The Smart Ticketing Alliance has its origins in the European IFM (Interoperable Fare Management) project. The ambitious aim is to bring together various ticketing standards – such as Calypso (France/Belgium), ITSO (UK) and the VDV core application (Germany) – onto a single smart card capable of supporting multiple standards.
The project proved to be a technical success and made it clear that international cooperation should not come to an end. Together with our partners Calypso, ITSO, AFIMB and the UITP, we therefore founded the Smart Ticketing Alliance in 2015.
John Verity served as Chairman of the STA for more than 15 years. On 11 May 2022, he stepped down from active service at the IT Trans event in Karlsruhe, and a new board was elected: Ralph Gambetta (Calypso) has been Chairman ever since, with Nils Zeino-Mahmalat (VDV eTicket Service) as his Deputy.
Several colleagues from our company are involved with the STA, not just our boss Nils. Jaap, who is responsible for international standardisation and certification here, is the Technical Secretary. Anja handles organisational matters and attends the STA’s board meetings. Michael is a member of the ABT Working Group. René’s name appears in a paper on ticketing in the Maas region, published jointly with the UITP. The Glossary Working Group would not exist without Wilk, and Kerstin is in charge of corporate communications.
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