Case study – Education

Self-service kiosks issue Berlin’s student cards

Printing thousands of multifunctional cards for the students of Berlin’s Universities.

The challenge: Edit student cards with innovative functionalities

More than 180,000 students enrolled in Berlin’s universities in the Autumn of 2016. In order to ease the burden on the student administration offices, six Berlin universities participated in a joint project in 2014, with the aim of introducing self-service kiosks for the instant issuance of student cards.

In addition, the universities wanted to offer to students, additional, innovative functionalities with the card, which were made possible by this new electronic system. Deployed in Autumn 2016, the campuscard provides access control, a loan card for the university library, an electronic wallet for the cafeteria as well as a bus and train ticket.

The solution: Integration of 20 KM500B and 30 Tattoo-RW printers into self-service kiosks

The leading German card management system developer PRO SERVICES GmbH was selected by the universities to develop 20 machines for the personalization and the instant issuance of the student cards. For this ambitious, innovative project, PRO SERVICES opted for the card printing system KM500B manufactured by the French company Evolis, and distributed in Germany by Pfister ID Systeme.

The modular KM500B printer system has been specifically developed for integration into self-service kiosks. 30 additional accreditation kiosks were developed in order to validate the student card and to re-enroll students starting a new term. These kiosks integrate the Evolis system Tattoo-RW, which uses the thermo-rewrite technology. It instantly deletes the validity date of the student card and enters a new date.

The result: Time saving and flexibility for multifunctional cards

Each campuscard is encoded with a contactless RFID chip, which allows for tamper-proof encoding of personal data.

The card shows a bar code, the name of the owner, his or her registration number, the university library number and an ID photo as an option. Today, students can create and print their own multifunctional electronic campuscard within a minute, even outside the opening hours of the student offices.

Due to the rapidly increasing number of students, we had to find a more optimal solution for the issuance of the student cards. Lack of space and personnel in the student offices led to the idea of self-service kiosks. We also wanted an innovative solution that not only replaced the old card, but also offered new functions to the students. We are very satisfied with the machines by PRO SERVICES. They work perfectly without any failure.
Dr. Tamas Molnar, head of the campuscard project at the universities of Berlin