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