Warsaw skyscraper gets contactless mobile access control

Contactless mobile access control gates at
Warsaw skyscraper
TOUCHLESS ENTRY: Users store a digital credential in the Skyliner app on their phone to enable access

Employees of businesses with offices in the Skyliner building in the Polish capital of Warsaw can now get “touchless entry” to their workplace and shared amenities with a digital credential stored in an app on their Apple or Android smartphone.

Office and business park developer Karimpol Group has implemented the mobile access control system on some 300 Bluetooth-enabled door readers across the 42-storey skyscraper and integrated it into the building’s dedicated Skyliner app.

Karimpol originally planned to introduce an access control solution that supported both physical cards and app-based digital credentials, but “as it turns out, 95% of tenants have only ever used the mobile one, with physical cards only given to visitors”, the developer says.

The system uses HID’s Mobile Access solution that also enables administrators to “manage the credentials based on available licences and assign batches of virtual cards to specific tenants” as well as allowing tenants to “manage the virtual credentials themselves from within the Skyliner app”.

“In our previous building, we just used plastic cards. But staff were always losing or forgetting them, which wasted my time. Our reception would have to call me to confirm that an individual was really an employee, and I’d then have to reissue a card,” Karolina Cieślak from Skyliner tenant company Bolt says.

“The attractiveness of the Skyliner app in conjunction with HID’s Mobile Access solution is one of convenience, as frankly no one leaves their home without their phone. I can activate and deactivate virtual credentials easily, and as physical plastic cards aren’t used anymore, it helps us to be more green.”

A survey published in August revealed that four in ten businesses worldwide are planning to upgrade to a mobile-ready contactless access control solution.

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