All About Tapkey

Tapkey never stands still—we are constantly evolving, and growing. Thus a lot has happened since our founding almost 9 years ago. Every day we open doors, not just proverbially, but physically, for thousands of customers. Now we want to open our doors and give a few behind-the-scenes insights. In this article you’ll learn who’s behind Tapkey and how the platform works, including more links to other posts. Let’s talk about Tapkey!

How it all started

Gregor Zehetner, Markus Minichmayr, Jochen Schurich and Gilbert Hödl founded the company in 2014. Actually, it all happened out of a personal need. A couple of years ago, they had a practical problem of managing office access ​for steadily changing project teams of up to 40 people. Key handover and repeated loss of keys was a real hassle, and we wanted to get rid of these problems. That was the starting point for building a game-changing mobile app for access management—the Tapkey app.

The mission was (and still is) clear: by eliminating the barriers of physical access, Tapkey leaves no doors, locks, or opportunities locked.

And then in 2019, more than 6 years later, Tapkey transformed into a platform offering “best in class” integration capabilities

From prototype to platform

The main idea behind the Tapkey platform is offering a secure ecosystem that provides innovative cloud-based mobile access to various market verticals. Whether in the residential, coworking, automotive, retail, or any other business industry, our proven technology brings seamless access control solutions. Lock manufacturers are also offered a quick and easy integration to shorten their time to market with digital locks. DOM, one of the largest lock manufacturers in Europe, has been working with Tapkey since 2016 and has been able to reach new target groups and increase sales. The years of collaboration and the uniqueness of the solution convinced so much that they joined Tapkey as a shareholder in 2022. But one thing has always been clear: Tapkey is an open platform. Whether lock manufacturers or system integrators, Tapkey acts as a technology that opens up the possibility of smart access to everyone.

What’s it all about

Technical solutions are only helpful if they can be efficiently integrated into an existing system. Our main products and services are our open interfaces for integrators. By integrating Web API, Mobile SDK and Lock SDK, we can offer keyless access as a valuable feature to different vertical solutions. Since 2021, the portfolio has been expanded to include white label options. Partners benefit from the fastest time-to-market for their own individual app for smart access control. As part of our flexible and open platform, we also provide a fully functional Keyring App as an open source solution.

To simplify the decision process of integrators, we created this checklist and a detailed documentation at Tapkey for Developers. It will show integrators what they can expect from Tapkey. Depending on which integration is relevant, customers can manage locks, digital keys and NFC transponders either with the Tapkey app or the external app. 

 

Here is more information about Tapkey. Don’t forget to check out our blog and social media channels!