Innovation on Scholarship Luncheon, ITB Starts to Use RFID System for Payment

Oleh Hafshah Najma Ashrawi

Editor -

January 28, 2013

BANDUNG, itb.ac.id - Another technological innovation from Bandung Institute of Technology, this time venturing into the realm of Economics Scholarship ITB. Directorate of Developmnet ITB in collaboration with the Directorate of Infrastructure, Lembaga Kemahasiswaan, and Unit Sumber Daya Informasi (USDI) ITB implement systems Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for payment of scholarship lunch at the several canteen started in early February.

Initially, RFID was first used for Kartu Tanda Mahasiswa (KTM) on graduate program and in 2012 it began to be applied to RFID systems KTM generation undergraduate students 2012. In addition, the use of RFID itself previously been applied to the student presency and parking for employee in ITB.

Scholarship luncheon is one of the economic scholarship at ITB. The scholars are students from ITB who reside in dormitories in their first year. About 200 students get the scholarship and scattered in various faculties at ITB. For the beginning of February, the new payment system using RFID is applied in two canteens at ITB which is Bengkok canteen and Gedung Kuliah Umum (GKU) West canteen.

Advantages of RFID

RFID is a system used to identify the type of goods, and even RFID can also be used to determine the owner of the radio frequency cards that are emitted from the label on the card. RFID works by detecting radio frequency issued by the label and is read by an RFID reader so that the desired unknown code could be identified.

In order to process RFID, smart card reader available in some canteens in ITB which will help calculate how many points have been used by RFID card owners. Each point is worth Rp6.000, 00 and accumulated a total shopping card owners. RFID system allows scholars to use some points in one day at a time. Each month, every scholars get around 20 points.

It is one of the benefits of the use of RFID for scholarship luncheon. Previously, ITB using paper vouchers given to each of Administration faculty every week for used by its students afterwards. If paper vouchers scholarship luncheon earlier has limits on usage, RFID payment system uses a point with a limit of one month expired so that is doesn't limit the scholars to use some points at one day.

Another advantage of RFID systes is because of the integrated with KTM, the transaction process will be easier to be monitored. Compared with the previous mechanism scholarship luncheon using paper, an RFID system would be cheaper in terms of cost. The Use of RFID system is also more secure because it is not easily duplicated.

"Development of an RFID system is still more, hopefully for the next development RFID can be used for various purposes such as student loan book in the library, or class presency," said Asep Ariyan as technical implementing RFID systems ITB.