Smart facilities choose smartcards

Gladstone Health & Leisure are not only the leading supplier of membership management solutions to the Health & Fitness industry, we have also been supplying and consulting on many types of membership cards over the last 15 years including the more technically-advanced smart cards concept. Today, we supply well over in excess of 1 million cards a year to our customers across the UK, Ireland and Australia. With that customer experience, we have developed a comprehensive breath and depth of expertise that ensures that not only can we can offer you the best solution to your business needs but can also command some of the best prices in the industry.

Today's membership cards solutions can vary considerably including the successfully deployed Smart card concept. These really are clever cards, as they contain an electronic chip within the plastic card which can read and write information, very similar to the likes of Chip and PIN debit/credit cards in your wallet or bag, which we are all too familiar with these days.

Recent market trends in the leisure industry have shown us that the demand for smart contactless cards is now higher then ever. The contactless card is the same concept as the London Underground pre-paid Oyster card. These contactless card solutions, also known as proximity cards, are ideally suited to the leisure industry where reliability and speed-of-use are invaluable.

The real benefit from the Smart Card is in their flexibility - when they are used for a number of different uses and applications. Local authorities have used these multifunction cards for many years to control leisure facilities, library management, locker control, car park payments, and so on. The cards have sufficient memory to hold all of this different information making it more cost-effective for the local authority and hassle-free for the local population.

Gladstone also works with several large scale projects like the National Smart Card Project (NCSP), the National Entitlement Card (NEC) in Scotland, and The Forum for Citizen's Cards (FCCW) in Wales. The NCSP is the dominant format within England and Wales, we have developed our interface to be able to recognise these cards and to interact with them accordingly. Our Gladstone solutions have also been designed to interface with the NEC Scottish project. The FCCW was founded in 2002 to encourage local councils to work collectively to consider the possible benefits of a multi-function card bringing together all the services offered by the local councils.

Gladstone has vast experience of migrating from barcode or magnetic strip technology to the latest smartcards. We do this by providing multiple readers or dual technology cards which include the smart technology and barcodes printed on them. Gladstone works closely with our customers to gradually move over to smart card technology without disruption to their business.

To find out more information about how the latest smart card technology can transform your business please call/ email our Card Hotline for some sensible advice.

T: +44 (0)141 773 5908
F: +44 (0)141 773 5926
E: Click here to email us

4 December 2008