On Track Innovations has designed and implemented millions of cutting-edge solutions to enable its customers to complete cashless transactions. Last month, the company unveiled its latest innovation; a three-in-one card reader geared towards self-service operators. Maryrose Fison speaks to Ofer Tziperman, chief executive officer of OTI to find out more
A visitor to one of dual-listed smart card systems developer On Track Innovations’ (OTI) hi-tech work spaces today would have a hard time imagining what the company looked like when it started out 24 years ago.
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The Rosh Pina-headquartered cashless payment solutions provider has expanded from a four-man band operating out of a single room in an Upper Galilee Kibbutz to a dual-listed organisation with offices on four continents and an annual revenue in excess of $19m in the fiscal year 2013.
Listed on the German stock exchange in 1999 and the New York Stock Exchange three years later, the company today counts more than 160 employees across its network of offices in Israel, the US, Poland and South Africa.
It holds approximately 100 patents and revenue increased 43% to $5.2m in the first quarter of 2014, compared to the corresponding period a year earlier.
Gross profit in the first quarter of 2014 increased 30% to $2.6m from S$2.0m in the corresponding period last year and at the end of the quarter, cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments totalled more than S$14m.
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By GlobalDataAt the helm of the company is 52-year-old Ofer Tziperman, chief executive officer of oti and a World Economic Forum 2001 "technology pioneer" nominee.
Tziperman joined oti in 1995 as vice president of marketing and sales and has oft-been cited as having played a significant role transitioning the company from a young start-up to an international organisation.
He was closely involved in the company’s initial public offering on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange before leaving the company in 2000 to co-found LocationNet Systems, a provider of mobile local search and off-board navigation solutions.
After selling LocatioNet in 2010, he was approached by the then-chief executive of oti and asked to rejoin the group with a post leading the parking division. "The oti potential is enormous and it provided an exciting challenge," he says looking back at his decision to return to the company.
He rejoined in 2011 as president of PARX and was appointed chief executive of OTI in March 2013.
Tziperman says that the company’s biggest achievement over the past decade has been the expansion of its offering through the creation of three "vertical market solutions"; the EasyFuel System, EasyPark solutions and oti Readers and WAVE device.
"The company has evolved from being a technology provider to a full-solution and system provider," he says. "Today we are serving various vertical markets based on our decision to build specific vertical solutions in designated markets that present high-growth opportunities."
EasyFuel operates as a vehicle identification solution that enables fuel to be dispensed automatically. Tziperman says it has been installed in more than 43 countries over the past 10 years for the management of commercial fleets’ fuel.
EasyPark, an in-vehicle personal parking metre, is currently in operation in more than 160 cities around the world and, in June, the company signed a five-year contract to help manage more than 5,000 on-street parking spaces in Arlington County, Virginia.
Tziperman says that budget constraints in municipalities across the globe have resulted growing demand for more cost-efficient vehicle parking payment systems.
"They[Municipalities] all eventually realise that as a municipality, there is an opportunity to secure revenue with their on-street parking real estate and regulate on-street parking for improved traffic management. So they look for a parking fee collection system that will be cost effective."
"The in-vehicle parking metre is a perfect example of a solution with no investment by the municipality and one that requires no ongoing maintenance costs. Municipalities that are deploying the in-vehicle parking metre are enjoying an increased net income," he says.
He says that end-users also benefit because the solution enables them to pay only for the time they use, rather than over-feeding a parking metre or getting a ticket for exceeding the time paid.
And the figures back this up. More than one million EasyPark solutions have been sold since the solution was launched.
The oti WAVE, a contactless smart card in the form of a key fob which can be connected to smartphones, was recently purchased by a consortium of banks and Tziperman has high hopes that it will gain further traction over the coming 12 months.
Trio Modular Reader
The company’s latest innovation, the Trio Modular Reader, launched in June, has already begun to make waves.
The product provides multiple payment options to in unattended market segments, such as vending machines, self-service laundromats and car washes.
Tziperman says it has already secured its first commercial order from UK-based telemetry and software solutions provider Vianet, which intends to install the readers in vending machines across the UK and Netherlands in the third quarter of this year.
"This is an important win for oti as it marks the first commercial order for Trio as well as a major new reader customer outside the US," he says.
"Trio gives our clients the flexibility to use any card interface their customer might need to perform payment, including legacy magnetic stripe technology, while also preparing them for emerging payment solutions such as contactless cards, NFC-enabled devices and smart phones and smart EMV cards".
By 1 October 2015, all point-of-sale machines that accept cashless payments will have to be EMV-certified in the US. This move – also known as the Counterfeit Card Liability Shift- essentially provides that parties making investments in EMV deployments by October 2015 are protected from financial liability for card-presentation counterfeit fraud losses.
Tziperman says that the liability shift mandate is contributing to the acceleration of market demand for oti’s readers. The company has recently seen the greatest increase in demand for its products in the North American and Asia Pacific markets and is also seeing growing need in Latin America and Africa.
Ofer Tziperman, chief executive officer of OTI
On a sector-by-sector basis, the company is seeing the greatest demand from the payment retail market.
"The payment market’s evolution is moving away from cash and from low-security magnetic stripe cards, into high security chip cards," says Tziperman. "As part of a risk management consideration, card associations are now forcing the market to migrate to high security chip cards, both contact and contactless and including NFC-enabled devices."
As increasing adoption of NFC terminals looks set to accelerate demand for cashless payment solutions, Tziperman maintains a thoughtful and well-grounded approach towards the future.
"By investing our resources in researching various vertical markets, we are able to focus on providing the best solutions with the most efficient pricing structure," he says.
