Bitwards customers and partners: education, property owners, public facilities, integrators, lock manufacturers and service providers

Partner · Integrated service provider

Interbook: the booking and the door, in one municipal system

Pinea's Interbook is the booking system Swedish municipalities run their halls and premises on — and it is deliberate about access: Pinea calls itself the leader in integrations to municipal locking and passage systems in Sweden.

Interbook serves three constituencies at once, which is what makes it a municipal system rather than a booking tool. Administrators handle bookings, payments, entry and invoicing in one place, with rules, approvals and opening hours set centrally. Clubs and associations book premises and keep track of their own times in the same service. Residents get to the municipality's offering directly from a phone, with a clear overview and a confirmation, and without an errand.

What it covers

• Booking overview — halls, premises, times and bookings in real time, free and taken at a glance.
• Season applications — clubs applying for times in halls, premises and arenas for the coming season.
• Passage integrations — bookings connected automatically to the locking system, so the right person reaches the right room at the right time.
• Lottery management — the permits side, digitised like the rest.

Access as a package, not an afterthought

Interbook Passageintegrationer is one of Pinea's own packages, which is the part worth noticing here: access is a product line in their catalogue, not a one-off piece of custom work for a single municipality. Bitwards Mobile Access is one of the systems it connects to, so a resident who has booked a hall gets in with their phone, for the hours booked, without anybody handing anything over.

Secure login with Swedish e-identification is available as an option, so the person who booked is demonstrably the person at the door.

Who Pinea are

Pinea Sweden AB brings close to forty years of experience of how municipalities actually work. All operation runs in Sweden, which they put forward as a GDPR argument as much as a latency one, with logging, permissions and traceability through the system.

Visit Pinea’s Interbook page →

Summarised from Pinea's own description of Interbook. Pinea Sweden AB.

Partner · Integrated service provider

Mercantus Timeworks: a municipality's bookings, and the doors that go with them

Timeworks gathers a municipality's spaces, places, resources, services and service channels into one system — and the access rights that follow a booking are part of it, not a separate errand.

Mercantus is a Finnish software company in Helsinki; Timeworks is its booking platform, productised for cities and municipalities and sold as a service. One system covers the different booking processes a town actually runs: rooms and halls, pitches and courts, equipment and devices, people, events and services — plus the receipt and processing of sports facility shift applications, which is the part that usually has its own ageing system of its own.

The resident's side

The booking service is where residents and groups such as sports clubs do their business. It supports Suomi.fi identification and payment, a search across bookable resources and services, and bookings of places as well as spaces — market stalls, boat berths, parking spaces and allotments among them. Memberships are handled there too, gym and boat-berth memberships for instance, along with event registration. The interface meets the WCAG accessibility requirements of the accessibility directive, works across devices, and is multilingual.

The administrator's side

• Calendar views and search across the whole booking position, with several resources — spaces, equipment, people, services, products — attached to a single booking.
• User roles and permissions per group: administrators, municipal staff, guides and instructors, sports administration, a sports club's own administrator, the restaurant.
• Single, recurring and open bookings; spaces divided into parts, or combined.
• Space-specific approval rules, extensive pricing, messaging for confirmations, and reporting and logs over the booking history.

Where access control comes in

Mercantus has built integrations across the municipal estate — finance systems, school administration, course management, facility management, info and door-side displays, visitor management, single sign-on and Suomi.fi identification and payment — and, among the access control and locking systems, Bitwards.

That is what makes this the service-provider pattern rather than a resale: the resident books and pays in the municipality's own service, identifies themselves with the national identification they already use, and the door opens because of the booking. Nobody involved thinks of it as access control.

Timeworks is in use at a number of Finnish cities and municipalities, among them Espoo, Tampere, Turku, Järvenpää, Kangasala, Pirkkala, Uusikaupunki, Mäntsälä and Pornainen.

Visit Mercantus Timeworks →

Summarised from Mercantus's own description of Timeworks for cities and municipalities. Mercantus Oy, Helsinki.

Partner · Integrated service provider

Biketti: the door is part of the parking, not a step before it

Biketti builds secure bicycle parking — from a parking bay to a 400-space garage — and has put access inside its own service, so booking, arriving, entering and paying are one flow rather than four.

Founded in 2021, the Finnish company answers a problem that arrived with the growth in cycling: where to leave the bike. Its products are space-efficient, deliberately good-looking parking buildings offered to developers and property owners, in three sizes — Biketti 50, 200 and 400 — plus parking bays, a digital parking house and services around them.

Reserve, arrive, go in

Space can be booked in advance. On arrival the app recognises the user, with strong authentication, and the doors open — no physical key, no access card, and no queue at the entrance. In certain circumstances biometric confirmation can be required as an additional step.

And what the operator gets

• Every passage through the door is recorded by camera, which is what deters misuse and theft in an unstaffed building.
• Parking charges are viewed and paid in the same app, so a user's parking is always current without an office being involved.
• Modern locking throughout the building, so the bike is as secure as the promise made when the space was booked.

Why this is the service-provider pattern

Biketti's customer never meets an access control product. They meet a bicycle parking service that happens to open its own doors — booking, identity, entry, payment and storage behaving as one thing. That is what integrating the platform through a service rather than reselling it alongside one looks like in practice.

Visit Biketti’s app page →

Summarised from Biketti's own description of its parking application. Biketti Oy, Finland.

Partner · Product manufacturer

Waferlock: premium hardware, designed and made in Taiwan

Smart cylinders, handles and locks built to a standard that lets them go anywhere — offices, hotels, campuses, hospitals, stations — and exported worldwide.

Waferlock designs and manufactures in Taiwan and sells globally. The range covers the three shapes a project actually needs: smart locks, smart cylinders that convert an existing door without replacing it, and smart padlocks. Mortise locks too, for the doors that take them.

The company's own framing is a balance between security and convenience, and the hardware reflects it — handle locks rated IP68, water- and dust-proof bodies for exposed doors, and a design standard good enough that the lock is treated as part of the interior rather than something bolted onto it.

Built for the awkward buildings

• Commercial — access control through every area of a building, hardware and software together.
• Hospitality — several system types by hotel size, all supporting PMS integration.
• Education — dormitories, classrooms, lockers, equipment and public areas, with third-party software able to control and monitor the devices.
• Healthcare — from home care to hospitals, including contactless options, with biometric data stored separately.
• Government and transport — high-security access control with weatherproof hardware and centralised monitoring.
• Coworking, short-let and residential — from a single unit to a whole community.

Why this matters here

A premium manufacturer with its own design and production is exactly the kind of partner an open platform needs: the hardware is specified on its merits — finish, rating, durability, the shape of the door it fits — and mobile access arrives as something the factory has already built in, rather than a box added to the wall afterwards.

Visit Waferlock →

Summarised from Waferlock's own description of its products and markets.

Partner · Product manufacturer

ÜLock Novus: the electronics disappear into the lock case

Südmetall's answer to the reader on the wall is to not have one. Everything that decides about the door lives inside the lock, behind the door itself.

Südmetall, of Ainring in Bavaria, makes fittings, handles and locking systems. ÜLock Novus is its mortice lock with the access control electronics built in: all the sensitive components sit in the lock case, protected by the door and the lock. The only thing on the outside is the reading unit in the key rosette, which passes card data to the evaluation unit inside and cannot be tampered with to any useful effect.

That has a consequence worth stating plainly for anyone specifying a building: the handle is no longer dictated by the access control. Lever models stay freely selectable in design and colour, special finishes, PVD and antimicrobial surfaces are all available, and a mechanical profile cylinder for emergency opening is retained. No reader on the wall, and no additional components, drilling or milling for a retrofit.

Bluetooth, and what it opens up

Südmetall equipped the Novus with a Bluetooth module in response to where the European market was going: control by smartphone, and specific variants built for OEM customers. That is the manufacturer's half of this platform's bargain — the hardware ships ready for mobile, and the customer-facing service can carry somebody else's name.

Two power options

• Battery. Two AAA cells, invisible inside the lock case, replaced quickly and without tools. Easy to retrofit, since nothing else is needed.
• Inductive. Charged through the striking plate, so no battery changes and no maintenance — the variant Südmetall puts forward as the sustainable one.

Either way, opening is by RFID medium or by smartphone, and the lock keeps its 20 mm mechanical self-locking.

Visit the ÜLock Novus page →

Summarised from Südmetall's own description of ÜLock Novus. Süd-Metall Beschläge GmbH, Ainring, Germany.

Partner · Product manufacturer

Flexlock Smart: the lock maker who runs the service too

Flexlock has supplied tens of thousands of locks across Scandinavia and Europe. Flexlock Smart is the service those locks run on — sold, administered and supported as Flexlock's own.

Flexlock makes locks for lockers and cabinets: the Invisible, Visible and Public ranges, fitted in offices, changing rooms, schools and shops. Smart is the system that turns them into managed access — a phone, a card or a tag as the key, administered centrally from a browser, across many locks in many places at once.

What the customer gets

• Administrators manage locks and users from a web browser; the service is cloud-hosted and holds the data.
• The mobile app talks to the locks over Bluetooth, on iOS and Android alike.
• A user sees only the lockers they have access to.
• History — who opened which lock, and when — and battery status are shown and stored in the administration program, so a flat battery is a scheduled visit rather than a complaint.
• GDPR is accounted for, with customer-tailored anonymisation of the history and a clearing function.

Sold as a service, not a box

This is the part worth noticing from a manufacturer's seat. Flexlock Smart is sold as software as a service, on a contract that carries a service level agreement and a data processing agreement with it. The lock is still the product; the service is what makes it worth more every year, and it belongs to Flexlock rather than to anybody else.

It scales from a handful of locks to thousands, and works as comfortably across separate sites as it does in one building — which is the practical test for a manufacturer selling into estates rather than single rooms.

Visit the Flexlock Smart page →

Summarised from Flexlock's own description of Flexlock Smart. Flexlock is part of Swedstyle, Vaggeryd, Sweden.

Partner · Integrator & distributor

Seriline: mobile IDs for the access control a customer already owns

Seriline sells identity and access management across Sweden and the Nordics — cards, readers, printers, the Serix platform. Mobile access is how the same customer keeps all of it and still retires the plastic.

The pitch Seriline makes is about the system already in the building. Mobile IDs are credentials that stand in for physical smart cards in an existing physical access control system: they are generated in the cloud service and delivered to people's phones. A reader authenticates them and passes the result to the access controller, which decides about the door exactly as it did before. Nothing about the decision-making changes — only what the user carries.

An open ecosystem, by design

Seriline describes the platform as an ecosystem rather than a product line: manufacturers can implement BLE support in their own equipment, and access control systems integrate over an API. That openness is what lets one customer mix technologies instead of standardising on a single vendor's hardware.

One app, optionally wearing someone else's name

A single mobile app holds the rights to everything a user has access to, on iOS and Android, and works online or offline. It can be white-labelled to carry the customer's or the end-user's own brand, and an SDK puts the same functionality inside an app the customer already ships.

Stand-alone, or integrated in stages

Mobile access can be run from a web application as a separate piece of the access control estate, or integrated step by step up to full API integration — where names, employee IDs and even card IDs come from the access control system, and every access right stays defined there. Several RFID technologies can run alongside mobile IDs over Bluetooth or NFC. The credentials are reusable: when somebody changes phone, or leaves and is replaced, the ID is not thrown away with the card.

Cidron readers, ready for mobile

Seriline's own Cidron reader series is built for the door environment that has to last: robust against weather and abuse, available in standard and narrow profiles with or without a keypad, customisable in colour and logo, and configurable for most standard RFID technologies as well as BLE and NFC. Accessories cover the awkward installations — weather and privacy shields, vandal protection, distance plates — and readers arrive pre-configured with the agreed settings and the partner's authentication key.

Sharing access, offline

Access sharing is the offline half of the cloud platform. Users are administered in a web application or imported from an access control system over an API; rights reach the phone, which checks in with the platform periodically to stay current, and changes propagate through the users themselves. The lock hardware runs from digital cylinders, door handles, padlocks, furniture and cabinet locks, and controllers with a Cidron pin pad — on batteries or mains.

Read Seriline’s own article →

Summarised from “Mobile Access Solutions”, published by Seriline on 12 June 2020.

Partner · Integrator & distributor

Securitas Flow: the platform delivered as a Securitas service

Securitas Technology sells, installs, supports and bills keyless access control as Securitas Flow — its own service, on this platform, under its own brand.

Flow is presented to the customer as an intelligent, secure digital access control solution with no cabling: doors open from the user's own phone, and the whole thing is administered from a web portal, encrypted, from wherever the administrator happens to be. It suits buildings where people need temporary access most of all — a new way to govern who gets into which space, and when.

One platform, many kinds of opening

The cloud platform carries a wide range of hardware: handles, padlocks, cabinet locks and lock cases, plus relay units for lifts, machines, gates and barriers — all driven from the same mobile application. The breadth comes from Flow's Open Access Partner programme, through which device manufacturers can make their hardware Flow-compatible without licence costs.

Integrated, or standing on its own

Flow runs as a stand-alone system, or integrates through existing interfaces with the systems a customer already has — including identity management, so people sign in to the Flow app with the same credentials they use for their computer. It can also be put in front of an existing electronic access control system to add mobile opening and retire the physical cards.

• A connection is needed when the right is granted; after that the door works offline, opening when the user is physically next to it.
• Some supported devices use Bluetooth 5, with a range measured in tens of metres rather than centimetres.
• Administrators add and remove users from a web portal, set which doors and gates each may use, define time windows, and read the logs.
• Rights can be issued in real time or sent ahead; the recipient gets an emailed link to the app and is ready to go. iOS and Android alike.
• An adapter can be fitted beside a mechanical lock in about ten minutes, with no cabling, so an existing locking system is modernised rather than replaced.

Visit the Securitas Flow page →

Summarised from Securitas Technology's own description of Securitas Flow.

Partner · Integrator & distributor

MACS: the platform under another name, in France

Selepso delivers the complete platform in France under the MACS brand — Mobile Access Control Services — an umbrella that runs across all the companies in the Selepso group.

MACS is sold as two services on one platform, reached through a single mobile application. It is the clearest example of what white-labelling means here: the customer buys a Selepso service, from Selepso, supported by Selepso.

MobileID — the credential

MobileID puts identifiers on the phone, running alongside the RFID badges an organisation already issues or replacing them outright. One user can hold several identifiers at once; the reader's purpose is detected automatically and the right one is sent to it. It connects to systems already in place, or to new ones, and it reaches further than doors: time and attendance, catering, secure printing, EV charging, machines, forklifts, dispensing cabinets.

MobileAccess — the door

MobileAccess is the access control itself, hosted in the cloud and carried by the phone, which is what allows the infrastructure underneath to be so much lighter. It drives electronic locks and door controllers from several manufacturers, and the hardware does not need to be wired to a network or a central bus: the lock decides for itself, then hands the record of what happened back through the phone to the cloud.

• Works on isolated doors with no network coverage at all.
• Low installation and running costs, and a simpler installation to begin with.
• Scales as the estate does, across customers, sites and applications.
• Compatible with a broad range of multi-brand hardware — doors, lockers, cabinets, racks.
• Integrates with third-party systems by API or flat-file exchange, with an SDK for putting it inside an existing app.
• End-to-end encrypted tokens, with the exchange running both ways so audit trails and device status come back automatically.

Visit Selepso’s MACS page →

Summarised from Selepso's own description of the MACS service.

Success story · Parking

Two hundred spaces, and nobody winds down a window

A new two-storey garage under a condominium in Matinkylä, Espoo — opened from the phone as the car rolls up to the gate, with no key, no fob and no reason to stop.

The condominium opened in August 2021 with a two-storey garage of 200 parking spaces, planned from the start to be easy to get into. The building company bought four electric locks from Arvolukko and put them on the Bitwards platform. Users open the doors from the app, or with a PIN on the panel beside them. Keys and remote controls are not part of the arrangement.

A smooth user experience

Mauri Mononen and Pirjo Suhonen have two spaces in Mahtinokka. He drives daily; she leaves the car for weeks and uses it a few times a month. Both report the same thing: it simply works, and neither of them has to step out of the car.

“I have used Bitwards for three weeks. The use of the app is easy, and I don't need codes or keys anymore. I always have my phone on me, so the access is smooth now.”

Mauri MononenResident, Mahtinokka

Access rights granted. Fast.

Sannamari Isosomppi works in the maintenance unit and is one of the administrators of the system. She creates the groups, grants the rights and supports the users.

“I created a user group to which I have added the end-users of the garage. The online service is straightforward to learn and user-friendly.”

Sannamari IsosomppiMaintenance unit, Mahtinokka

Residents rent their space on a monthly contract, which is where the turnover comes in — and where handing over physical keys used to cost everyone an appointment.

“Residents do not need to come and pick up or leave their keys. They just have to download the Bitwards mobile app, and register as users; then I provide them with the access rights online. If the contract comes to an end, I just have to revoke the access rights of the resident from the group.”

Sannamari IsosomppiMaintenance unit, Mahtinokka

What the garage got out of it

• One app for access — no keys, no remote controls.
• No internet connection needed at the door.
• Mechanical and electric locks alike can be brought onto the platform.
• Access rights administered in real time from the cloud service.
• Competitive to install, with no wiring.
• Security tested.

Originally published by Bitwards, 21 February 2022.

Case study · Coworking

CatMarina: book, pay, walk in

Twenty-two meeting rooms in a new office and coworking space in Lahti — and a plan, at first, to hand out keys for all of them.

CatMarina started in the furniture business in the 1970s and has become a significant property player since: an indoor sports arena in Hollola, floating villas and saunas, and now an office and coworking space. Its founder and CEO Heimo Hälikkä has always been curious about new technology, and the brief for the new space was a safe, user-friendly experience for everyone in it — which meant access had to be controlled and manageable.

Twenty-two rooms, and the key drawer that never happened

The first thought was traditional keys. Then somebody counted the rooms.

“We should have employed someone full time just for handling access authorizations, handing out keys and keeping a log book to track users or chase forgetful customers, not to mention having to order expensive service to replace all the locks because of lost keys. We started to look for alternatives.”

Jenni MattilaSales, CatMarina

Security first

Mobile keys turned out to be the safer option as well as the easier one. The doors to the building stay closed; only authorised people open them; once inside, people move freely between the rooms they have rights to.

“Security is essential for us. Bitwards Mobile Access ticked all the boxes concerning security and safety, as it allows controlling the flow of who is accessing the premises at all times, making it a safe environment for our customers to work in because we know that keys cannot end up in the wrong hands. We can deny access if deemed necessary.”

Jenni MattilaSales, CatMarina

Why Bitwards, and why Asio

“We chose Bitwards because Bitwards could deliver fast and accommodate our needs. They also had an integration with Asio, which provided the online booking system that our customers now use to reserve meeting rooms. Customers, staff, cleaning service crews, and occasional visitors could immediately access the premises by downloading the app.”

Jenni MattilaSales, CatMarina

There was one small problem early on, not of Bitwards' making. It was found and fixed quickly, which Mattila counted as the more useful proof: “It's comforting to know that if bigger things arise in the future, we can rely on prompt, responsive and competent customer service, which is so rare nowadays.”

Book, pay, access

• The customer books a room or a space, for the time they want, in the Asio web service.
• They pay for the booking through an online payment service such as Paytrail.
• Asio authorises the Bitwards Mobile Access service to issue the rights.
• Bitwards sends the rights to the mobile application.
• The customer opens the booked space at the booked time.

Asio is a Finnish IT company specialising in booking management for schools, cities and municipalities, restaurants, business parks, parking halls and lodging — spaces, rooms, classrooms, parking spaces, devices, times and events. Because the API integration between Asio and Bitwards already exists, a deployment like CatMarina's is a matter of configuration rather than construction.

Who would Jenni Mattila recommend it to?

“I recommend implementing Bitwards Mobile Access in any office with more than one employee. It is unquestionably worth the initial investment. For example, we will never have to go through any costly key replacement operation. The system works; employees don't have to make an appointment to meet customers to hand out keys or to remind people to return them. I would also recommend it to Airbnb owners: customers book and pay online and are granted access to their app in a few minutes.”

Jenni MattilaSales, CatMarina

CatMarina is now considering the same arrangement for bookings of its floating villas, and for storage rooms.

Text: Katariina Benedetti. Graphics: Bitwards / Susanna Määttä. Originally published by Bitwards, 9 February 2023.

Case study · Property owner

Ylva: one portfolio, every kind of tenant, one key

Residents, office tenants, gym members, bands, guests and a construction crew — all in the same buildings, and until recently all on different access control systems, or none at all.

Ylva is owned by the Helsinki Student Union. Its purpose is to enable a vibrant student life, and it has been part of Helsinki's cityscape for over 150 years. It owns some of the city's most recognisable buildings: the Old and New Student House, and Domus Academica, the housing complex where generations of students have lived.

Challenge one: the common areas

Domus Academica is three distinct housing properties, plus commercial space, conference rooms, a laundry, shared areas and a garage — with Aalto University Executive Education as a tenant. A complex that heterogeneous is exactly where traditional access control becomes costly and awkward, and where PIN codes quietly stop working.

“We share the basement, sauna and laundry room. We used to have a PIN-code system, but the readers have been removed due to the codes ending up in wrong hands.”

Markus ThoméProperty manager, Ylva

“Crossing from one building to the other is challenging, as there are different access control systems or no access control system at all. The intricacy of the systems affects people's everyday life and overloads the administration, as we need to manage access control in many different systems simultaneously, which is costly and slow.”

Markus ThoméProperty manager, Ylva

Challenge two: the tenants

Outside tenants are a user group of their own — a gym with 3,000 customers and its trainers, and band rehearsal rooms that want a booking system worth the name.

“The gym has 3000 customers plus the trainers. The band rehearsal spaces would like to have an efficient booking system. The access control currently in use is obsolete and confusing. We are in charge of it, but we'd like the gym and the rehearsal space to manage access independently.”

Markus ThoméProperty manager, Ylva

What Ylva wants next

The ambition is a tenant who never carries a key at all: one login that opens the laundry, books a sauna shift, an office or a party venue, reports a maintenance need, shows the house rules, or reserves a turn at the shared car.

Laundry, common areas, garage, gym — done

Mobile access is already running in the common areas, and the administrative load has fallen with it.

“The app is easy to use, and the admin work has reduced dramatically. Misuse has diminished, and tenants have been mostly very pleased. The common areas in the guest house have a mobile key. It's so convenient not to have to hand out keys, and that access rights go straight to users' phones and are valid for the agreed time.”

Markus ThoméProperty manager, Ylva

The gym's trainers have started using the mobile key too, and would like to run their own access in future.

“One clear example of how much easier daily life has become is that we have one-month-long renovation works starting soon, and with the app, I was able to assign access rights to the crew, for example, to the garage for the duration of the project. How incredibly easy is that? It is a relief to know that keys will not be forgotten somewhere, in the pockets of the construction crew members or on their desks. We don't have that problem anymore.”

Markus ThoméProperty manager, Ylva

Next

NFC on Android makes the phone behave like a keycard — show it to the reader and the door opens — and that is due to be tested in the Ylva property. Beyond it lie the apartment doors themselves, which would take the friction out of moving in: access granted when the lease is signed and withdrawn when it ends, rather than a tenant racing the lobby desk to arrive before four o'clock.

Who would Markus Thomé recommend it to?

• New builds — construction companies should consider access control based on mobile technology from the start.
• Any property renewing its locks or its obsolete access system, or considering mobile access.
• Any property with a problem of unauthorised people getting in.

Text and editing: Bitwards / Katja Sonninen. Translation: Bitwards / Katariina Benedetti. Originally published by Bitwards, 25 May 2023.

Success story · Coworking

A former bank in Porvoo, opened by phone

CoSpace Finland rents workspace by the hour. That only works if getting in is as easy as booking — so the old access control system went, and the phone became the key.

CoSpace Finland Oy offers coworking space to companies and to individuals: desks, workspaces, meeting rooms, seminar rooms — and a sauna. Customers get high-speed internet, printing, copying and scanning. Space can be booked for as little as two hours.

That last detail is the whole problem. When customers arrive and leave all day, for stays measured in hours, access control has to be effortless to run and impossible to get wrong. CoSpace had been looking for a system that could keep up, and not finding one.

“We rent the selected space for a minimum of two hours, and because of customers coming and going, access control has to be smooth and easy to manage.”

Petter LarsenCEO, CoSpace Finland

From a conference conversation to a live building

Petter Larsen met Bitwards CEO Eljas Saastamoinen at an international conference and heard about the platform there. CoSpace adopted it in 2018, becoming one of Bitwards' first customers — and Mobile Access replaced the legacy access control system in the building outright.

“The Bitwards solution suits our needs perfectly. The technology is safe, reliable, flexible and user-friendly. There is no need to physically meet a customer, as it is possible to allow access remotely. The user-friendliness is of particular importance to us because many of our customers occasionally need to use the facilities only for a short time.”

Petter LarsenCEO, CoSpace Finland

And then the building across the street

The second test of an access system is what happens when you add a building. CoSpace opened a HUB — a meeting and teamwork space — directly opposite, and put it on the same platform, with lockers under consideration after that.

“Another big advantage of this system is that it is scalable. We have already implemented the smart key platform in a building that we opened just opposite CoSpace.”

Petter LarsenCEO, CoSpace Finland

Today the Finnish high-tech company Lamor Plc works from the same premises — a tenant of a different size and kind, on the access control that a two-hour meeting-room booking already proved.

Quotations from “Bitwards converts smartphones into keys” by Tuomas Lehtonen, published in Ilta-Sanomat on 13 March 2021; English translation by Katariina Benedetti.

Success story · University

A mobile phone as the key to the Otaniemi campus

Aalto University and its property company ACRE are moving a campus of more than 2,000 access-controlled doors from plastic cards to mobile IDs — a piece at a time, at the pace the campus itself can take.

Otaniemi is not a building, it is a small town: around 15,000 students and 4,000 staff, spread across a campus with more than two thousand access-controlled doors. Once mobile IDs are the norm, the number of credential holders will approach twenty thousand.

The aim Aalto set was “invisible access control” — a campus where getting through the right door takes no thought at all, while the doors meant to stay closed stay closed. The transition away from physical cards has been deliberately gradual, following the readiness of the people who use the campus rather than a switch-off date.

“Access control is a central element of the campus experience and security. Every member of the Aalto community should be able to move as effortlessly as possible, while ensuring that doors meant to remain closed do stay closed. Today, many people already have a smartphone with a calendar, wallet and all essential applications — so why not also a key for moving around campus.”

Ville JokelaManaging Director, Aalto University Properties Ltd (ACRE)

Seven years of joint development

The mobile ID pilot began in 2019, in the university's coworking facilities across five campus buildings. That was the point of it: to test the system against a genuinely broad user base and adapt it to a campus environment, rather than to a demonstration. The brief was to simplify the access-control processes, improve security, and bring the cost down. The joint development work between the university, ACRE and Bitwards is still running.

Mobile ID also changes what a change costs. Rights can be updated and modified without anyone reissuing a card, and the same credential can be extended beyond doors — to storage lockers, or to equipment.

Why the architecture matters at this size

The technology behind the mobile ID solution has its origins in Nokia's former research centre, which itself worked closely with Aalto over the years.

“Security is at the core of Bitwards' operations. The system is based on distributed intelligence, allowing locks to evaluate the validity of encrypted mobile identifiers. The Bitwards solution offers almost unlimited scalability for different applications and use cases.”

Eljas SaastamoinenCEO, Bitwards

That distribution is what makes a campus of this size practical. The lock decides, on its own, whether a credential is valid — so the door does not depend on a cable, a controller, or a live connection to a server to do its job.

Where it stands

Aalto now recommends the mobile credential to every member of the community, students and staff alike. The count passed ten thousand users in autumn 2025 and reached sixteen thousand a year later. Aalto has had positive feedback and development ideas in roughly equal measure, and reviews the awkward cases one at a time — which is what a seven-year transition on a live campus actually looks like.

Read Aalto’s own article →

Facts and quotations from “Mobile phone as the key to campus”, published by Aalto University on 6 October 2025.

Success story · University

Enriching the educational experience of the students of the University of Helsinki

The craft science and education department of the faculty of educational sciences opened its new premises in 2021. Bitwards provides easy and secure access throughout.

The department welcomes students who need to work on their projects at varying hours. Staying in the lab for a short while, or spending hours there to finish a project on time, can be critical — and needs access that is both easy and secure. These students will one day graduate to become class teachers in primary and secondary schools in Finland, where technical work is part of the curriculum.

It was clear that granting access to hundreds of students every year by handing out physical keys was impossible. The department occupies three floors and is served by a lift. There are several sizeable machines that students learn to operate and need to reach. The question was how to ensure that only authorised people could enter the premises and use the machines safely and independently.

Making access easy and secure

Erno Vähänen, the senior laboratory technician, cares for the machines, works as a supervisor, and administers the Bitwards platform, assigning access rights to the students.

“From the first year, students get access rights to the doors so they can freely get acquainted with the spaces. When their study progresses, they have to pass theory and practice tests to operate the machines. These tests are strict, because many of the metal and woodwork machines can be dangerous if not operated appropriately. Once the students pass, they get access rights to the machines of the department. Thanks to Bitwards, they get to practise on their own.”

Erno VähänenSenior laboratory technician

Security above all

In case of need, he or another supervisor is always there. The Bitwards solution is aimed specifically at high-risk machines, such as the planer, the band saw and the circular saw.

“The best thing for me is that I can feel safe when the students are working with the machines. I know that only authorised people can access them, and that those people know what they are doing. Bitwards gives me a sense of security.”

Erno VähänenSenior laboratory technician

Senior lecturer Antti Hilmola finds the platform straightforward: “I particularly enjoy the fact that we can grant easy and secure access rights to anyone. And that we can decide on the timeframe. I think this system could be particularly suitable for vocational schools or universities of applied sciences.”

Students and modern access control

During a visit to the campus we interviewed a few students, touring the premises by opening doors with the Bitwards app.

“The biggest plus is that we can move freely on the campus; once the app is on our phone, we do not require any keys to open doors or cards for the lift,” says Inka Hissa, a first-year student.

We followed two students, Melissa Lynch and Kreetta Uusitalo, to the material storage room in the basement, taking the lift and opening the doors with the app. There is no internet reception down there. Bluetooth lets the app work all the same — even underground.

“The connection might be a bit slower sometimes underground, but it always works and we think it’s great,” they say. The app has charmed students who, at first, wondered how it was possible to open doors and unlock machines with a touch on a phone screen.

Text: Katariina Benedetti. Originally published by Bitwards, 19 December 2022.