In another milestone for smart-card projects on the mainland, database maker Sybase has won a contract to provide software for an electronic payment system that will be used at up to 30,000 petrol stations across China.
The project is being tested at 4,200 stations run by China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) in 29 cities and 11 provinces, according to Sybase officials.
The officials said Sybase's portion of the project was worth US$4 million for database and application development software. No details were available about hardware or the exact timing of the commercial launch of the card project.
Sinpopec's project represents one of many initiatives aiming to use smart cards and electronic systems to automate and record purchases. With projects for mobile phones, transportation and identification cards already launched or under testing in the mainland, China is considered one of the largest smart-card markets in the world.
According to Mark Wang, Sybase general manager for Asia Pacific, the new Sinopec system will replace one using cash and paper chits which made it more difficult to keep records and track consumer behaviour.
'They need to manage and control the gasoline distribution system. In the past it's been manual. As you can imagine in the past few years, the market has grown dramatically,' he said.
Sinopec, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, does make extensive use of computers and information technology in other parts of its operations, Mr Wang said, but 'they're not connected for this purpose and it's not uniform'.
