[HN Gopher] Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful
___________________________________________________________________
Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful
Author : aecsocket
Score : 324 points
Date : 2025-05-15 10:59 UTC (3 days ago)
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| PaulHoule wrote:
| If I had to ask "why is it so fast?" I'd turn it around and ask
| "Why are western systems so slow?" and posit that Western capital
| has an ideology that throughout matters by latency doesn't. (As
| Fred Brooks puts it, "Nine women can have a baby in one month").
| As an individual or a customer you perceive latency directly
| though, and throughout secondarily. So it comes down to empathy
| or lack thereof.
| aecsocket wrote:
| The magnitude to which FeliCa was faster shocked me as well
| when I found out. But it's not like the latency is
| insignificant: it's obvious how much faster people can get
| through a Tokyo metro gate than a London one. So clearly it
| must have some kind of financial impact as well, if an entire
| city's public transport system works slower because of it. Even
| ignoring empathy for a second, isn't this the kind of thing
| that a Western capital ideology is supposed to improve? Some
| food for thought.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is not just capital but the interpersonal and bureaucratic
| factors.
|
| Technically the way to think about latency is that a process
| has N serial steps and you can (a) reduce N, (b) run some of
| those serial steps in parallel, and (c) speed up the steps.
|
| For one thing, different aspects of the organization _own_
| the N steps. You might have one step that is difficult to
| improve because of organizational issues and then the excuses
| come in... Step 3 takes 2.0 sec, so why bother reducing Step
| 5 from 0.5 sec to 0.1 sec? On top of that we valorize "slow
| food" [1] have sayings like "all good things come to those
| who wait" and tend to think people are morally superior for
| waiting as opposed to "get you ass out of the line so we can
| serve other customers quickly" (e.g. truly empathetic,
| compassionate, etc.)
|
| Maybe the ultimate expression of the American bad attitude is
| how you have to wait 20 minutes to board a plane because they
| have a complicated procedure with 9 priority levels and they
| have to pay somebody to explain that if you are a veteran you
| are in zone 3 and if you have this credit card from an
| another airline that this airline acquired you are in zone 5,
| etc... meanwhile they are paying the flight crew to wait,
| paying the ground crew to wait, etc. Southwest Airlines used
| to have a reasonable and optimized boarding scheme but they
| gave up on it, I guess the revenue from those credit cards is
| worth too much.
|
| [1] it's a running gag when I go to a McDonalds in a distant
| city that it takes forever compared to, I dunno, Sweetgreens,
| even "fast" food isn't fast anymore. When I worked at a BK
| circa 1988, we cooked burgers ahead of time and stored them
| in a steam tray for up to ten minutes and then put condiments
| on them and put them in a box on a heat chute for up to
| another ten minutes. Whether you ordered a standard or
| customized burger you'd usually get it quickly, whereas
| burger restaurants today all cook the beef to order which
| just plain takes a while, longer than it takes to assemble a
| burrito at Chipotle.
| brigandish wrote:
| > On top of that we valorize "slow food" [1] have sayings
| like "all good things come to those who wait"
|
| Japan has its own versions of these things so I doubt it's
| this. The whole culture is, in general, not built for
| efficiency either.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > American bad attitude is how you have to wait 20 minutes
| to board a plane because they have a complicated procedure
| with 9 priority levels
|
| The purpose of the many boarding groups is IMHO, to make
| those in groups > 1 feel as though they're missing out on
| some perk that they could get if they paid more. It's an
| intentional class system where some are encouraged to look
| down on those who paid less, and vice versa. It's good for
| revenue, bad for people.
| hiatus wrote:
| I doubt airlines complicate boarding groups to reinforce
| classes. It is likely all about the bottom line, and
| nickel and dime-ing you at every opportunity.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| I think the point is that creating a class system is one
| way to maximize revenue. The social aspects of that
| system - looking down on people in economy, or aspiring
| to be the people in first class - aren't necessarily the
| first order effects, but I suspect they contribute.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Exactly, that's the point. Creating an envy structure in
| order to increase revenue.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| US govt transportation agency central planners will happily
| spend billions to bulldoze a neighbourhood for a freeway
| lane, all to shave a few hypothetical seconds off a car
| commute, so I don't think the issue is that US culture
| isn't interested in speed, latency, or throughput.
|
| Airline boarding is not the only class system in play. At
| every level of government, even within transit agencies,
| transit and its customers are seen as and treated as second
| class citizens. The idea of investing money, time or energy
| to shave even scores of minutes off the commute of someone
| who uses a bus, often seems as if it's an unthinkable
| thought in these organizations.
| secabeen wrote:
| > meanwhile they are paying the flight crew to wait
|
| Most flight attendant and pilot union contracts only pay
| them based on the hours with the door closed or in flight.
| (This is changing, but it's how it's been for a long time.)
| This reduces the incentives for quick boarding, as most of
| the flight crew is not being paid for that time.
| toxik wrote:
| The departure times dominate latency and throughput in
| metros. The gates are not the bottleneck.
| chgs wrote:
| When a full train empties out at a specific station you can
| get massive delays. Euston platforms 8-11 come to mind. Two
| arrivals of 600+ people (including standing) trains in a
| minute or so in say 8 and 11 can cause chaos.
| aecsocket wrote:
| It depends. Usually you'd be right, but for some big
| events, the stations and platforms can be incredibly
| packed. In those cases the extra delay from gates could
| really hurt. One example is Comiket, where you have
| thousands of attendees all coming to the same few stations
| around the venue. Both times I was there, there was a
| massive crowd spanning from the platform to the outside.
| Having to wait the extra few hundred milliseconds on each
| card tap would have been painful.
|
| Here's an example video to show the gates in action:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YffjxN3KsD4
| numpad0 wrote:
| ref:
| https://twitter.com/sigeyosiinoue/status/891206258488885248
| avianlyric wrote:
| > So clearly it must have some kind of financial impact as
| well, if an entire city's public transport system works
| slower because of it.
|
| Unlikely, most cities transport systems will run into issues
| with capacity long before they run into issues with ticket
| gate latency. No point getting people through the gates
| faster if they're just gonna pile up on the platform and
| cause a crush hazard.
|
| At peak hours in London, the inbound gates are often closed
| periodically to prevent crowding issues in major stations. If
| you look at normal TfL stations you'll notice there's
| normally a 2:1 ratio of infrastructure for people leaving a
| station vs entering. Because crowding is by far the biggest
| most dangerous risk in a major metro system, and also the
| biggest bottleneck.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > throughout matters but latency doesn't
|
| Governments who think this set speed limits on roads to 45 mph,
| since that's the speed where most cars pass per second on a
| busy road.
|
| Those same governments then act all surprised when it turns out
| their whole population is depressed and overworked when they
| work a 9 hour workday, commute 1.5 hours each way, and have no
| free time for life, relationships, hobbies, etc.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Another angle: mass transit is seen at best as a cost center in
| the west, when it's more expected to be a fully profitable
| business in Japan [0]
|
| Paris adopted an IC system as well and it is pretty usable, but
| not pushed to the extremes of the JR system because they
| weren't ready to invest as much, manage the money aspect and
| really make it a full blown business.
|
| [0] some lines and areas are definitely money pits. That's
| where some companies bail out of the IC system altogether for
| instance, or go with a different, incompatible but cheaper
| implementation.
| lmm wrote:
| Japan hugely subsidizes public transport both directly and
| indirectly, e.g. almost all employers will pay for employees
| to commute by public transport but not by car, because the
| government heavily incentivises them to do so. The Japanese
| transport providers are indeed more entrepreneurial about
| this kind of stuff, but I think that's more a case of Japan
| having high trust in government and quasi-governmental
| entities than expecting them to pay their way. (Indeed a lot
| of the penny-wise pound-foolish decisions we see in western
| public transport are driven by an insistence on cutting costs
| at all, well, costs).
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Or the Hong Kong model. Railway operators are also property
| developers whose main profits comes from selling homes next
| to important stations. (This is not necessarily a good
| thing)
| Nasrudith wrote:
| What exactly is wrong with said approach? My guesses are
| sprawl promotion and attendantly encouraging elimination
| of green spaces more than normal for developers?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Companies paying for public transport is a matter of
| flooring the commute cost: (almost) nobody lives in an area
| with no public transportation and car commute costs more,
| so companies will pay the price for lowest commute and you
| get to decide what you do with it.
|
| Same thing if your train transit costs 440 yens at base
| rate but you decide to ride first class or even one of the
| special luxury trains at a thousand+ yens, you'll only get
| the base 440 yens from your company.
|
| On profitability, as mentioned by sister comment, they all
| have a realtor arm and also rent the space surrounding the
| stations to shopping malls and department stores, sometimes
| own or revenue share with the attractions in the town that
| will bring more visitors and they'll talk with he city
| planners to foster a whole ecosystem, JR famously gets a
| cut from every Suica transaction etc.
|
| They don't need to make it all from the ride ticket, even
| if it's price appropriately. Government has little to do
| with most of it, subsidies only matter on the smaller,
| super low volume lines where rising prices would kill the
| traffic.
| lmm wrote:
| > Companies paying for public transport is a matter of
| flooring the commute cost: (almost) nobody lives in an
| area with no public transportation and car commute costs
| more, so companies will pay the price for lowest commute
| and you get to decide what you do with it.
|
| If that was the reason they would simply not pay for
| commutes at all, as is normal in most other countries.
|
| > Government has little to do with most of it, subsidies
| only matter on the smaller, super low volume lines where
| rising prices would kill the traffic.
|
| Nah. Both the railway companies and the government lean
| into the myth of their being private operations because
| it suits everyone, but the "private" railway companies
| were set up with immensely valuable government funded
| capital assets and would never have been able to operate
| without them, they rely on government support for any
| substantial new capital investments, and they have the
| relevant governments as significant investors, in many
| cases the largest investors. Yes JR central is immensely
| profitable if you accept the accounting fiction that the
| tokaido shinkansen simply popped into existence one day
| and is worth nothing.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| > almost all employers will pay for employees to commute by
| public transport but not by car, because the government
| heavily incentivises them to do so
|
| Could you clarify this? To my knowledge only 2 things that
| could qualify as incentive exist:
|
| - commuting allowances are not considered taxable income
| for employee
|
| - commuting allowance could be used to reduce tax base for
| the business
|
| But this is not something I'd call 'heavily'.
|
| My understanding is that commute is universally covered as
| this is an expected job benefit in Japan, and commuting by
| car is disencouraged in cities due to the increased
| insurance liability (as commuting time could be considered
| work time and injuries incurred to 3rd party will expose
| the company to liability as well).
| lxgr wrote:
| Indeed. But the primary problem with western transit
| gates/turnstiles is this:
|
| Japanese IC transaction: Less than 100 ms.
|
| EMV IC transaction: Hundreds of milliseconds.
|
| The person in front of you in the New York subway only
| realizing that they might have to look for their phone or card
| in their bag as they're already blocking one of very few
| turnstiles, and your train is arriving: Timeless.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| This is perhaps more of a 'New York' problem (i.e. high
| passenger volume + small stations + slow turnstiles).
|
| In the Netherlands, there are cases where this can happen too
| (notably, Amsterdam South station), but generally there are
| less passengers and/or bigger stations (= more fare gates).
|
| https://i.ytimg.com/vi/35qeaOD7haw/maxresdefault.jpg
| lxgr wrote:
| The problem is definitely exacerbated by human behavior.
| There are almost always multiple turnstiles, but I've seen
| groups of people managing to block all of them
| _simultaneously_ , figuring out how to use them...
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| The last time I was in NYC was 10+ years ago, but from
| what I recall, operating the turnstiles correctly
| required some experience: you need to know that they
| require manual operation (not obvious to first-time
| users), and then you also have to operate them at the
| correct speed (going too fast doesn't let you through).
|
| Systems with fare gates (i.e. most systems worldwide)
| don't have these problems, because it's obvious when you
| can pass through.
|
| Then factor in lots of tourists/visitors (who aren't used
| to this system) + aforementioned small stations.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's true for Metrocards and paper single ride tickets,
| but no longer an issue for OMNY.
|
| Most delays with OMNY seem to be due to the fact that
| people need to unlock their phone or pick a card because
| they don't have express transit enabled.
| avianlyric wrote:
| When it comes to ticket gate line in a public transport system,
| latency and throughput are basically the same thing.
|
| There is no practical way to increase the throughput of ticket
| line, _without_ reducing latency. It's not like you can install
| more gates in most stations, the station isn't big enough, and
| you can't make the gates smaller because the people aren't
| small enough.
|
| Every transit system measures and has throughput requirements
| that their gates need to meet. That inherently means latency
| requirements, because one gate can't process multiple people in
| parallel!
|
| Also western systems aren't that slow. The videos in the
| article are a decade out of date and show people in London
| using paper tickets! And almost nobody using a contactless card
| or Oyster card.
|
| In London the Oyster cards are very fast. Fast enough that a
| brisk walking pace the gates will be completely open by the
| time you reach them, assuming you put your card on the reader
| the moment it's within comfortable reach.
|
| Contactless payments on the other hand are slower. But there's
| not much TfL can do there. The slower speed is entirely the
| result of the contactless cards taking longer to process the
| transaction. TfL track contactless cards latencies by bank and
| card manufacture. There's a non-trivial difference in latency
| between different card manufactures and bank configurations.
| But that's not something TfL can control themselves.
| timewizard wrote:
| The article suggests a reason:
|
| > Places like Hong Kong and Tokyo have a lot of commuters,
| leading to a lot of congestion around station gates.
|
| However I think it's actually _population density_ that's the
| critical factor. The investment in new payment technologies is
| much more likely to pay off in these environments than in the
| US.
| pwim wrote:
| Unfortunately transit operators are looking to discontinue the
| use of these IC cards in favour of QR codes as part of a cost
| saving strategy:
| https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20241015/p2a/00m/0bu/01...
| charcircuit wrote:
| That article doesn't say they are.
|
| >It will continue to accept national IC cards such as Suica and
| Icoca
| cmcaleer wrote:
| I hope it lasts, but I'm seeing gates which have QR code
| readers, IC card readers,and contactless payment readers,
| which is obviously unsustainable. One or more of these will
| have to give eventually, and given Japan's tolerance for QR
| code payments (PayPay is massive) and foreigners' familiarity
| with contactless it seems like IC is the most likely one to
| go.
|
| I'd be sad if they do go or get relegated to some app, I love
| the little mascots.
| lozenge wrote:
| I thought contactless is considered too slow? The exit
| gates are often open and only close when somebody attempts
| to pass without their IC card/insufficient balance on the
| IC card, how does this work with contactless?
|
| I feel like they could combine the IC and contactless
| reader into one bit of hardware with some engineering.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > I feel like they could combine the IC and contactless
| reader into one bit of hardware with some engineering.
|
| This is the case in the Netherlands. The same readers
| accept the old OV-chipkaart (stored-value) system and the
| new OVpay (EMV) system.
|
| Actually, I feel like when the OVpay system was rolled
| out, the existing OV-chipkaart readers simply got a
| firmware update, giving them the ability to read EMV
| cards and phones.
|
| Both of these systems work across all tranit modes and
| operators in the entire country (and even at a few
| stations across the German border), and there are various
| models of reader that are used.
|
| (note: OV = openbaar vervoer = public transport)
| numpad0 wrote:
| They've gotten NFC VISA payWave at least _comparably_
| fast as FeliCa by skipping a few checks. It 's still not
| as fast as genuine Suica - look how hard these men force
| their own fist to stay on the reader like their pay
| depends on it[1], but Suica advantages are slowly
| becoming a tougher sell with population and economy going
| a long way down.
|
| 1: A 2021 VISA touch-to-ride demo
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To5S615UQtU
| avianlyric wrote:
| > I hope it lasts, but I'm seeing gates which have QR code
| readers, IC card readers,and contactless payment readers,
| which is obviously unsustainable.
|
| Why is this obvious unsustainable? The IC readers and
| contactless payment readers are normally built on exactly
| the same tech, or very similar tech. And they're pretty
| much always just a single reader capable handling IC cards
| and contactless payments locally, with back office
| processing to manage bookkeeping, and any needed external
| transaction processing.
|
| TfL in London has been operating paper tickets, contactless
| and IC card for something like two decades now. The IC
| system is starting to show its age, but that's only because
| the current stored value cards don't have enough on-board
| storage to handle the continued growth of TfLs systems, and
| all the new regions they now operate in. But even if the IC
| system they have plans to migrate and merge their IC and
| contactless system into one system that can handle both
| payment types and provide proper feature parity between
| them.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| There are several operators mentioned in the article. One is
| possibly switching entirely to QR because renewing the IC
| contract is too expensive.
|
| Some are cutting back to just Suica and Icoca. Some are
| switching to, or using from the start, tap-and-pay (Visa,
| EMV, etc.).
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| they want to replace that for cutting cost, this system is
| great when in large cities but in rural areas the speed,cost
| etc is excessive
|
| so there's that, I mean if we can optimize QR code system. the
| winner obviously would be QR because no need to have an
| dedicated hardware for this
|
| Yes, IC card would be faster but at what point the difference
| is matters???
| lxgr wrote:
| A perfectly aligned QR code, displayed on a bright mobile
| phone display, can work acceptably fast.
|
| Practically, many people however only start thinking about
| possibly needing to open some app to display it while they're
| already blocking everybody else's way at the transit gate...
|
| The biggest practical benefit of IC cards is that they are by
| nature always "armed", unlike QR codes in apps, and are
| readable from both sides.
|
| On top of that, due to being able to run mutual
| authentication and being able to store a trusted balance,
| they are much more resilient to outages of any backend
| system. QR code tickets invariably need networking and a
| central backend.
| em500 wrote:
| > Practically, many people however only start thinking
| about possibly needing to open some app to display it while
| they're already blocking everybody else's way at the
| transit gate...
|
| This really comes down to adoption. In China, where QR is
| ubiquitous, almost everyone has the QR ready to scan well
| before they reach the scanner.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| if its work on country that has billions of passenger, it
| would works on everywhere else
| lxgr wrote:
| Not necessarily. Regular riders vs. infrequent riders or
| tourists can make a big difference, for example.
| lxgr wrote:
| I believe QR codes are mostly intended to replace
| paper/magnetic single-ride tickets, not IC cards, in most
| transit systems.
|
| Magnetic tickets are already slower than IC cards, and are both
| more expensive to produce and harder to recycle than QR codes
| printed on regular paper.
| nayuki wrote:
| That is quite interesting. I took normal-speed medium-
| distance trains in Taiwan and there are many similarities to
| Japan. The ticket-checking gates to enter/exit the station
| are exactly the same models used in Japan. The tickets are
| similar to the ones used in Japan, but they have a QR Code
| printed on them and might not be magnetic. Even when you exit
| the station, the ticket gate will give back your ticket -
| unlike Japan!
| umbra07 wrote:
| Oh really? The two dmeo videos I just saw of the Japanese
| system seemed to give back your ticket as soon as you
| walked through the gate.
| nayuki wrote:
| The normal ticket gate behavior in Japan is that when you
| enter, the gate gives you the ticket back so that you can
| carry it all the way to the exit in order to prove that
| you traveled that journey. When you go through a ticket
| gate to exit the station, all Japanese ticket gates to my
| knowledge will dispose of your ticket.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've retained at least some tickets, somehow. No idea!
| nayuki wrote:
| I retained approximately one ticket in Japan. It was due
| to walking through a transfer exit gate at some station
| of the Tokyo Metro, which lets you walk through a non-
| fare-paid area to re-enter another station.
|
| I also retained all the Shinkansen seat reservation
| tickets (Te Ji Quan ) back when I had the old-style JR
| Pass, where you always had to enter/exit stations with
| help from the station attendant - and not use automatic
| ticket gates. I haven't tried the current style of JR
| Pass (since maybe 2022?), but I imagine that the exit
| gate would eat your seat reservation ticket, just like if
| you had bought the ticket in cash.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Hmmm, what if you don't insert your seat reservation
| ticket on the exit?
| soruly wrote:
| Yes, I believe so. JR East is now planning to fade-out
| magnetic tickets by using paper QR Code tickets.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've only used them twice (on Sinkansen, and on a regular
| train in Hokkaido), and it was nearly instantaneous - about
| as fast as an IC card. The whole experience felt like magic:
| you put the tichets into a slot, _whoosh!_ - and you pick
| them up on the other side.
|
| It is true that they are expensive to produce and hard to
| recycle, though, so it's a good idea overall. But I'll miss
| this iconic experience (or hopefully they retain it on some
| lines at least). (Edit: or just make the _whoosh!_ readers
| work with QR codes! :)
| lxgr wrote:
| It's not quite the same, but if you tap your IC card with a
| preloaded Shinkansen ticket, you at least get a rapidly
| printed seat indicator :)
|
| Another cool thing about the paper tickets is that you can
| supposedly insert them stacked (i.e. both Shinkansen and
| regional transit ticket at a transit gate), and the gate
| will figure out which one to eat and which one to hand back
| to you!
| notpushkin wrote:
| Hmm, I thought you can preload a transit ticket but still
| need to buy a paper-only Shinkansen seat ticket
| :thinking:
|
| And yeah, the ticket unstacking feature is really neat!
| (and probably it's one of the reasons they want to
| replace the paper tickets - it's a pretty complex machine
| on the inside :-)
| maxgashkov wrote:
| Not only more expensive to produce and recycle, but the gates
| have to be extremely complex to handle paper tickets (some
| railway museums in Japan have them cross-cut on display!).
| toxik wrote:
| I could use my European smartphone (well, smartwatch) as an IC
| card in Japan. I don't think it was slower.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If you're alluding to an Apple watch, it has Felica support
| wherever you buy it.
|
| PS: For anyone in doubt
| https://atadistance.net/2017/09/12/iphone-x-keynote-global-f...
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| It also works on iPhone, with built in wallet support for
| Suica.
| lhl wrote:
| It depends on the vendor and whether they are willing to pay
| for global licensing. For Garmin devices for example, only the
| APAC version have NFC-F support.
| chgs wrote:
| I haven't noticed any delay in london with a card, phone might be
| 200ms slower than credit catd. I Haven't been to japan for a
| decade, are they really that much faster - and does it make a
| difference? What happens if a card is wrong/doesn't scan/is
| invalid/etc at the higher speed?
| lmm wrote:
| > are they really that much faster - and does it make a
| difference?
|
| Yes and yes
|
| > What happens if a card is wrong/doesn't scan/is invalid/etc
| at the higher speed?
|
| Then the fare gates close in time to stop that person and the
| next 3 or so people behind them get annoyed and go around.
| zparky wrote:
| I'm currently on a japan train - using a suica card is
| essentially instantaneous. if the cards are declined for any
| reason the gates swing shut immediately, if that's what you're
| asking.
| chgs wrote:
| I don't see how that's any different to the underground
| walthamstow wrote:
| It's the complete opposite. Tokyo stations have open gates
| that swing shut on fail. London stations have closed gates
| that swing open on success.
| astrange wrote:
| Also, Tokyo trains have air conditioning, whereas the
| Underground is so hot and stuffy I'm pretty sure I got
| brain damage from it.
|
| Also^2, Japanese train stations have ads for B2B
| services, whereas almost every ad in London stations is
| for a musical. I'm not sure what this means.
|
| (Also fondly remember the surprisingly numerous signs at
| Kings Cross about how you shouldn't assault any train
| employees, and how teenagers weren't allowed to buy
| matcha drinks because they have too much caffeine.)
| chgs wrote:
| London surface trains have aircon, as do many underground
| lines.
| kolinko wrote:
| as for the uk train stations, the temperatures are in
| part due to their age - London Underground was built in
| 1870s, and since that time rocks accumulated so much heat
| that it is extremely difficult to maintain human-friendly
| temperatures. Japan subway is 70 years younger, so it's
| easier for them to maintain temps.
|
| (And my hometown Warsaw subway is even younger - 50
| years, and we don't have AC whilst temperatures are at a
| perfect level).
|
| What London underground might need is not AC, but a
| process to cool down rocks - importing coolness during
| winters. To maintain equilibrum you'd need to pump out
| around 1TWh heat every year. To bring it down to normal
| levels in say 20-30 years you'd need to pump out 2-5TWh a
| year.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| It's still a ventilation issue rather than directly an
| age issue : it's the equilibrium that matters at these
| timescales.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| What does that mean, "rocks accumulate heat"? Should be
| an even cool temp down there, as long as tunnels aren't
| too deep. A few vents to allow hot air to rise should
| work, no?
| isatty wrote:
| More input than output in assuming and vents were
| probably not built back in the day.
| walthamstow wrote:
| The ambient temperature of the clay earth around the
| tunnels has been rising since the tube was built
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling#
| Sou...
| brigandish wrote:
| Japan's trains have aircon but often it's not cold
| enough, and at the parts of the year when the climate
| moves from hot to cold or cold to hot you might find
| yourself on a train with heating still on because the
| _calendar date_ is still "winter" even though it's a hot
| and sunny day, while you sweat profusely and feel
| irritated about the seemingly widespread inherent
| inflexibility of the Japanese.
|
| Osaka's Hankyu trains are full of ads for musicals (it
| owns the Takarazuka Revue), I think that all this shows
| is that London has a far more vibrant cultural scene,
| which is apparent at all levels of society. I'd rather
| see ads for musicals than the ads for male hair removal
| clinics.
| astrange wrote:
| Well, London obviously does have one of (the most?)
| vibrant cultural scenes in the world.
|
| (Last time I was there I saw a singer from Mali, which I
| thought was interesting mostly because all of her backing
| visuals were StableDiffusion AI art and I don't know if
| anyone else noticed.)
|
| But it's also the capital of a country that should have
| an industrial economy and increasing doesn't have one
| anymore, because they've decided it's all sort of beneath
| them.
| chgs wrote:
| At busy times underground gates don't close, until
| someone scans the wrong card (which leads to them walking
| into the barrier and then the person behind walking in,
| then the barrier opening from the person behinds card and
| general chaos)
|
| And faster throughput would just increase that.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I cycle most of the time to be fair but that doesn't
| tally at all with my recent experiences of peak Oxford
| Circus
| 0xCMP wrote:
| In japan it's optimized for speed thanks to the IC working
| so fast so you are only slowed down if something fails. It
| rarely fails (if you're not a tourist...) so you see people
| walking through them pretty quickly and I have seen people
| run into each other because they assumed the next person
| was gonna go through.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Felica is virtually instant. Even faster than the original
| Oyster in London (which contactless card or phone is much
| slower than)
| vachina wrote:
| It matters because you don't have to interrupt your stride. You
| don't tap the card, you kinda just hold it and walk through at
| full speed.
|
| If the protocol is designed well, high speed doesn't mean high
| error rate either.
| lxgr wrote:
| The speed difference isn't in not phone vs. credit card, it's
| credit card vs. stored value card.
|
| Stored value cards are optimized for speed and cost, and as a
| result have shared symmetric keys available in both card and
| reader. That enables extremely fast transactions.
|
| EMV cards are (also) optimized (at least in the offline case,
| which transit gates use - the latency to talk to the bank
| backend would be too high) for security. The security model
| doesn't trust readers to keep keys secret, which means you need
| asymmetric cryptography for card authentication. The specs are
| old, which means RSA - which is very slow to run in cheap ICs
| embedded in these cards produced at scale.
| deergomoo wrote:
| I can't rule out that at rush hour in either country it makes a
| difference, because I haven't experienced it.
|
| But I'm with you, with an express travel card set in Apple Pay
| (so you can just plop your phone down on the reader without
| opening anything) there _is_ a beat for it to read on the
| Underground barriers, but it's basically the same length of
| time as it takes to do the step and a half from the reader to
| the gate. At a normal walking speed I don't feel as though I
| need to interrupt my stride.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| I love IC cards. They had them on all transport where I live, but
| a few years ago they changed to QR codes..
|
| Now it's a fiddle with an app, then try to get the right angle on
| a smudgy reader. Getting onboard takes much longer and it feels
| like technology sent us 2 steps back instead of forward.
|
| IC cards are better, and if they could be integrated in the phone
| then it would be even better and faster for everyone.
| mschild wrote:
| Would printing out the QR code and putting it into your wallet
| work or is it a changing one?
| lmz wrote:
| I think the most annoying part is the external QR reader (on
| faregates?). I've rarely had a good experience with those
| whether using a QR on paper or from a phone screen.
| xorcist wrote:
| Printing out the QR code and giving out to all your friends?
|
| I think most QR systems include some sort of rolling
| timestamp to combat that.
| 0xCMP wrote:
| iOS supports ICs fine. It has supported Suica since 2017 when I
| used it instead of the physical card.
|
| Forcing use of an app and QR codes does seem like a significant
| step back, although I guess it makes paper tickets much easier
| to implement with the same scanner.
| lxgr wrote:
| Android, however, does not support them at all unfortunately
| (at least on phones not targeted to the Japanese market).
| notpushkin wrote:
| I've read elsewhere in this thread that for Pixel you can
| flash a Japanese version of the system image and it will
| enable IC support. Definitely trying it out later.
| lmm wrote:
| The IC card companies got too greedy unfortunately - along
| with phones not supporting NFC-F if they're not designed for
| the Japanese market, the readers are also expensive. With
| various subways starting to introduce credit card contactless
| payment I suspect it's only a matter of time before IC cards
| go away.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I thought transport companies are the ones doing IC cards?
| (True for Japanese IC cards, except Pasmo)
| lmm wrote:
| > I thought transport companies are the ones doing IC
| cards?
|
| Well, a number of smaller transport companies are turning
| away from IC cards citing the cost of the equipment. I
| don't know at which point in the stack the greed is
| coming in - whether it's the IC committees, Sony with the
| underlying technology, some other player or all of them
| at once - but it's happening. JR East can probably
| sustain Suica for decades but you'll notice they've been
| making a hard push into traditional credit cards and
| banking; they've seen which way the wind is blowing.
| oivey wrote:
| At least in Japan, they all work from your phone already.
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| They even work when the phone is off
| notpushkin wrote:
| Is the card stored on the NFC chip? Or are you talking
| about these NFC-enabled SIM cards?
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's about fees and control. Whether it's EMV(Europay
| Mastercard Visa) or JR East, they take 3% commission on every
| single sales + realtime sales data for your competitors to
| abuse. So alternative choices gets occasionally chosen to
| replace them, I think often as bargaining chips and a backup
| plan.
| lxgr wrote:
| OP is talking about QR codes, not EMV open-loop systems.
| eloisius wrote:
| I think they are even more useful in Taiwan. Every single transit
| system across the entire island that I've ever encountered
| accepts EasyCard (You You Qia ). Even ferries. So does every
| convenience store, and even a lot of proper restaurants and
| stores. They are also fast, like you don't even have to break
| your strike while passing the turnstiles to enter the metro.
| lhl wrote:
| I think it's about equal for utility - Japanese Suica/Pasmo
| cards are also usable in every single konbini, at all the
| stations stores, across most regional transportation and taxis,
| and at maybe half of Tokyo shops/restaurants (it's a default
| option in AirPay and other PoS systems). A lot of vending
| machines accept Suica, and I use it at grocery or drug stores.
| You can even use it at some other types of shops like Bic
| Camera, although for high ticket items you're going to hit the
| Suica balance limits...
| https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/suicamoney/shop.html
| bemmu wrote:
| I seem to have managed to live in the only place in Japan
| where you can't use suica/pasmo for transport: Tokushima.
| Still works in convini though.
| lmm wrote:
| Tokushima Bus is apparently introducing IC card support
| next year.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Most, but not all. Wikipedia has a hideously convoluted
| diagram showing the complex web of interoperability or lack
| thereof:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_Mutual_Usage_Servic.
| ..
| lxgr wrote:
| The complexity is largely limited to monthly passes at this
| point, as far as I understand. Per the diagram (and my,
| very limited, personal experience), stored-value rides are
| supported across most systems, as there is a shared set of
| keys and station identifiers.
| walthamstow wrote:
| The funny thing about Japan is they have this wonderful
| universal IC card, but not everywhere accepts it, some accept
| only it, some only accept cash, some only cash or physical
| credit card, some only QR (PayPay), so you end up needing to
| carry several methods, and one of them is paper and coins!
| ksdnjweusdnkl21 wrote:
| It's amazingly fractured actually. In my home country every
| store pretty much has the same exact model of a card reader
| that takes all contacless payments and credit cards with
| chips. In Japan it's a coinflip wether a credit card reader
| can take contactless credit cards. And if you do it with
| the chip, it's always a fun process of the clerk not
| understanding you need to insert a pin or select a
| currency, so they sometimes abort the process in confusion.
|
| Needless to say, I prefer to use cash in Japan.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Variety is good! The fact the USA only has Mastercard and
| Visa and that they've colluded to keep all other forms of
| payments out is why their fees aren't lower.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-
| department-s...
|
| Japan has competition in payment systems. Paypay, D-Pay,
| Meri-pay, Line Pay, Rakuten Pay, etc... Each tries to
| entice both customers and retailers by offering discounts
| and bonuses.
|
| Also I'm happy to pay cash as it's private.
| starttoaster wrote:
| USA has Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and AmEx. Each of
| which try to entice their customers by offering better
| rewards programs. Though AmEx isn't taken everywhere
| (notably Costco) and Discover is hit and miss as well.
| kaladin-jasnah wrote:
| It's funny, because the Costco credit card used to be
| AmEx. IIRC Costco Canada only takes Mastercard, which is
| funny since the US Costco credit card is Visa, so you
| can't use the US Costco CC to pay in a Canadian Costco.
| Marsymars wrote:
| You actually can use the Costco US Visa at Canadian
| Costco, they've got a special exemption for it. (And
| vice-versa, you can use the Canadian Costco Mastercard at
| American Costco.)
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Japan has all of those as well and about 30 more
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The rewards programs are the anti-competitive lock-in.
|
| Visa and Mastercard charge high fees because their
| dominant market position forces merchants to accept them.
| Then they use part of the fees to bribe customers with
| rewards programs.
|
| A new payment network doesn't have leverage against
| merchants so can't charge the same high fees and
| therefore can't offer the same rewards programs, but then
| they can't get consumers to use their card, which is what
| they would need in order to get any leverage.
|
| The rewards programs are a grift. The price of everything
| goes up by 3% and _if_ you get a rewards card you get
| 1-2% of it back, therefore you get one. Then you 're
| still out the other 1-2% you wouldn't have been if the
| market was competitive, the people who don't get one get
| punished by being out the entire 3% (which inhibits
| competitors with lower fees), and Visa and Mastercard
| suck billions of dollars out of the economy into their
| Scrooge McDuck money bin because consumers have been
| defrauded into thinking this arrangement is to their
| advantage.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This is a great argument for forcing network interop.
| Akin to net neutrality, allow card companies to transit
| over the network for reasonable rates. This removes any
| networks ability to squeeze things like this
| Panzer04 wrote:
| It depends where the division is, I guess. It always
| feels a bit heavy-handed to force private companies to
| interoperate within their infrastructure. That being
| said, I don't really know a better way to do it.
|
| Having terminals be more universal would be good, but
| good luck replacing old ones and convincing entrenched
| market participants to offer them..
|
| The newer generation of products like BNPL are even
| worse; they often contractually prevent merchants from
| charging a surcharge commensurate with the cost of
| accepting that payment method.
| eloisius wrote:
| Even being aware of all that, I don't feel I've been
| defrauded. I don't have to carry around a wad of cash
| that can be lost or stolen, and on the rare occasions
| that I need to I can get the help of the credit card
| company in recovering money when I actually get
| defrauded.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| None of those things have anything to do with interchange
| fees or rewards programs.
| lmz wrote:
| The majority of the fees go to the issuing bank (as the
| entity providing credit), not the card network.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's the card network using their excessive leverage as a
| result of a lack of competition that allows the issuing
| bank to charge such high fees. Because if you accept
| Visa, you have to accept _every_ Visa.
| threeseed wrote:
| Australia was the first country to widely support chip/pin
| and then tap/pay.
|
| Even here cash is coming back into vogue as costs are
| pushing small businesses to evade taxes.
|
| I was in Tokyo last week and it was similar businesses i.e.
| mostly smaller and in lower margin industries.
| bondant wrote:
| >Australia was the first country to widely support
| chip/pin
|
| Do you have any source on that? I find it rather
| surprising.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't know if it's that surprising. It's easy to
| migrate over small markets and the population of
| Australia is extremely geographically concentrated.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Australia wasn't the first, but it did have the second
| highest adoption rate of contactless payments in the
| world at one point, behind New Zealand.
|
| In Australia, it helped that there were only about five
| POS acquirers of note (the big four banks plus Tyro), who
| owned pretty much all the terminal hardware.
| lhl wrote:
| On my shotengai there are many cash only shops and some
| cashless shops right next to it. I've also seen a lot of
| shops that are cash except for PayPay (presumably
| incentivized, or maybe they can support it without
| additional hardware). While it's a bit annoying, it's still
| better than the alternative (payment monopolies). The only
| thing that does irk me a little is that JR stations only
| support swipe, not touch pay for credit cards. I'm a bit
| undecided if that's just due to legacy hardware or as a
| subtle nudge to get people to use Suica instead.
|
| For Japanese payments, what's far worse is that so many
| shops and chains continue to have point systems that
| require their own point cards (and even the ones with apps
| seem to have awful slow UIs, at least on my iPhone).
| danielhep wrote:
| You can even use them at international chains like Starbucks,
| IKEA, and McDonalds.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Thailand and Malaysia also do this (not sure about IKEA,
| but definitely McDonalds and konbini, and probably
| Starbucks too)
|
| In Istanbul I think you can use the transport card to pay
| in some supermarkets, and of course it works on all
| transportation modes, including ferries. (As an aside, they
| also have a QR-code based system specifically for
| restaurants, which I think is used mainly by companies
| looking to compensate their workers lunches, but you can
| also use it in Ininal app to get a discount)
| anArbitraryOne wrote:
| Technically a gate, not a turnstile (which inherently slows
| traffic)
| sriamanan wrote:
| >the entire island Is it China's influence that Taiwan is not
| being referred to as a country.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The territory of Taiwan the country is not just Taiwan the
| island. There are other islands belonging to Taiwan such as
| Kinmen.
|
| If OP never set foot on these other islands it is simply more
| accurate to say the island rather than the country. But this
| is just an HN comment, OP might not have given the
| island/country word choice a second thought.
| lhl wrote:
| This is a great writeup and reminded me of some others I've seen
| in the past. For those interested on the topic, I used Deep
| Research to generated a report on turnstile/ticketing systems
| compared to others like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, London,
| NYC). Also asked it to do research on a few of the other related
| things like device licensing and the recent NFC-F chip shortages:
| https://chatgpt.com/share/6828429c-b618-8012-82a3-b8b992ac83...
| aspenmayer wrote:
| > This is a great writeup and reminded me of some others I've
| seen in the past.
|
| Did you mean it reminded you of others you'd seen on HN or just
| generally?
|
| I don't know enough about these technologies to speak to the
| authoritativeness or veracity of gpt output, but I appreciate
| the gesture.
| lhl wrote:
| Well I've seen some other writeups like
| https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-
| wh... that have also been referenced on HN. Discussions like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38694411 and others that
| are probably easy to search for.
|
| While some people have a reflexive dislike for AI output,
| I've done maybe a hundred o3 Deep Research queries now and
| found the reports to be generally high quality as well
| sourced as most human generated ones. I shared this one since
| I think it was a particularly interesting review the various
| systems around the world (I've personally used all those
| transit turnstiles personally and am generally familiar w/
| RFID/NFC/EMV systems and didn't spot anything egregious).
|
| (I find Deep Research reports to on average be high signal to
| noise than most of the human tokens being output on sites
| like HN for example.)
| tkgally wrote:
| Long-time Japan resident here. The IC cards do work quickly and
| smoothly, but the retail payment system overall is a mess because
| different stores accept different combinations of dozens of
| electronic payment brands.
|
| When shopping, I prefer to use the Suica app in my iPhone as it's
| just a quick touch, but some stores won't accept it so I have to
| use the Nanaco app--which requires a face recognition step--or
| pay in cash. I haven't bothered to set up a QR code app yet.
| Twice, when I tried to install PayPay, the most common one, I got
| stuck on an authentication step and gave up.
|
| Even shops within the same department store accept different
| combinations of payment systems. In my local Takashimaya, I can
| use Suica to buy food in the basement but not in the restaurants
| on the upper floors. Shops in the nearby Sogo Department Store do
| not accept Suica, only Nanaco, except for the Starbucks on the
| third floor, which does accept Suica.
|
| Convenience stores seem to accept nearly everything, as you can
| guess from the number of logos on this sign:
|
| https://news.mynavi.jp/article/osusumecredit-107/images/003l...
|
| Some relatives are arriving in Japan next Tuesday for a three-
| week visit, and they asked me what they should do about credit
| cards, digital money, cash, etc. I realized that, despite living
| here, I barely understood the situation myself, so I had Gemini
| Deep Research prepare a report for them:
|
| https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WY4AM0mJS94uwPMK8XjIQMLf...
|
| Another point to add is that in the 1980s and 1990s big security
| problems emerged with the magnetic cards that were used widely
| then for transportation and telephone calls. Here is what
| Perplexity has to say about that:
|
| https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-want-some-information-in-...
|
| I well remember the "open street markets in urban areas like
| Shibuya ... known for selling counterfeit cards."
| astrange wrote:
| > but the retail payment system overall is a mess because
| different stores accept different combinations of dozens of
| electronic payment brands.
|
| This is a fun thing to keep in mind when people tell you Japan
| is a "homogenous society".
|
| (It's not high-trust either.)
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| (What do you mean ?)
| perching_aix wrote:
| When people discuss Japan being a homogeneous society, that
| typically refers to it being a very _ethnically_ uniform
| society.
|
| I really, _really_ don 't see how that connects to... payment
| systems. Surely you're not trying to claim that what people
| actually mean typically is that Japan is homogeneous in every
| arbitrary way possible, right? That's a bit too much even for
| a strawman, even if I factor in the kind of forum this is.
| astrange wrote:
| > When people discuss Japan being a homogeneous society,
| that typically refers to it being a very ethnically uniform
| society.
|
| Even if you ignore tourists that's not really true of Tokyo
| either. Japan doesn't collect ethnicity statistics though -
| the numbers for this you may have seen are misreadings of
| something else.
|
| > Surely you're not trying to claim that what people
| actually mean typically is that Japan is homogeneous in
| every arbitrary way possible, right?
|
| That's absolutely what people online think about Japan,
| they think it's a stuffy collectivist society where
| everyone agrees with each other and there are no
| immigrants.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > Even if you ignore tourists that's not really true of
| Tokyo either. Japan doesn't collect ethnicity statistics
| though - the numbers for this you may have seen are
| misreadings of something else.
|
| Which is all very interesting, but remind me, how does
| this tie into payment systems again?
|
| > That's absolutely what people online think about Japan,
| they think it's a stuffy collectivist society where
| _everyone agrees with each other_
|
| ... and then they play the latest Yakuza and wash that
| down with a few episodes of Tokyo Revengers? It 'd would
| appear that one generalization doesn't beat another.
|
| > and there are no immigrants.
|
| YouTube has been overflowing with thinly veiled grifts
| lately about how everything in Japan is going to shit
| right now, and how it's because of the damn tourists and
| immigrants (heavily peppered with false crime rate
| figures and false immigration statistics of course).
|
| Still, pretty unrelated to payment systems. I can't shake
| the feeling that this is the exact same type of conflict
| sowing one can see under more mainstream topics. Vague
| mention of something, then a massive tangent, and all of
| a sudden we're discussing deeply controversial political
| topics. If you're not doing this with malicious intent,
| you might be in an unhealthy loop that I'd advise you try
| quitting. This is not helping anyone, which is what I
| intended to be my point.
| astrange wrote:
| I would say that the common image of Japan is that it's a
| weird place that only works because it's full of Japanese
| people.
|
| Whereas I would like to promote the idea that it's a
| normal place containing normal people (...many of them
| Chinese tourists, lately), and you can have the good
| things they have too if you simply copy their policies.
| Or in other words, there's no need for conflict.
|
| I don't know if payment systems are one of those anymore
| though. FeliCa is the best because it's so fast, but any
| kind of tap to pay is IME fine. Certainly better than
| having to use a ticket machine or buy a special card or
| work out change to give to the bus driver.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The banking system in Japan is homogeneously terrible ;)
|
| One reason for the success of IC cards as electronic wallets
| is because what banks offer is so inconvenient.
|
| But really, what works in Japan is cash. You are the odd one
| for paying electronically.
|
| It is slowly changing though. You can almost go cashless now.
| 10 years ago, cards were mostly just for withdrawals. 20
| years ago, good luck finding an ATM that accepts your card.
| Personal experience, in 2005, we spent half a day finding
| one, in Tokyo.
|
| As for being "high trust", it is certainly not as a
| foreigner, trying to do business in Japan. The "high trust"
| part is more about petty crime being really low, so you can
| leave your bag unattended in a cafe and it will still be
| there when you get back, in fact, it is a common way of
| "reserving" a table.
| thm wrote:
| I found Suica/Pasmo/Icoca to be the golden trinity for most
| regions.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Those are interchangeable - you can (generally) use Suica if
| a store accepts Icoca and vice versa, etc.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Some relatives are arriving in Japan next Tuesday for a
| three-week visit, and they asked me what they should do about
| credit cards, digital money, cash, etc.
|
| I've only been to Japan very briefly, but between an
| international credit card (Visa or Mastercard) and a Suica in
| Apple Pay, I never had any issues.
|
| Maybe this is due to having been only to very touristy areas,
| but almost everywhere I had to pay took at least one of the
| two, and thanks to being able to top up the Suica directly in
| Apple Wallet from my credit card, running out of a balance
| there was never an issue.
|
| Of course you'll need some cash for some smaller food stalls
| and shops, but getting that wasn't any issue either: ATM fees
| didn't seem particularly high as far as I remember (and my bank
| reimburses them).
|
| I was fascinated by the sometimes dozens of different
| contactless (stored value and otherwise) and QR code based
| payment methods accepted at some stores, but with the exception
| of a few vending machines (that also took cash), I don't think
| I've seen any place taking only these but not also either Suica
| or Visa/Mastercard.
|
| Quite the opposite, actually - ubiquitous ice cream vending
| machines on train platforms that accept the same card for
| payment people need to get into the station in the first place
| seem like a real health hazard :)
| rootsudo wrote:
| paypay to setup for QR code is just 2 minutes, and you get lots
| of bonuses, just have to suffer the trial by fire of your
| katakana matching your resident card ID name, which, everyone
| has their own version of.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I tried it said ten days to verify, then it failed...because
| my name was wrong. Gave up.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I heard you can pay a lot of bills via PayPay, so I wanted to
| use that too but I haven't been able to beat the authentication
| boss either.
|
| So so many weird quirks, my latest one is, I cannot withdraw
| cash from any ATM but a 7/11 ATM with a Seven bank card. All
| other ATMs just won't accept it anymore...how does one even
| begin to resolve something like this ?
| NanoYohaneTSU wrote:
| No they aren't weird. It is a very simple system that doesn't try
| to destroy the customer.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| weird (positive)
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I don't understand -- we are talking about 100ms or so of
| latency? which is almost completely dwarfed by any mechanical
| action such as the gates actually opening?? This is about as
| ridiculous as it gets. The videos that compare the UK system with
| the JP system practically show the same throughput, even when in
| the UK video most people are using magnetic/paper tickets (which
| by necessity are going to be much slower than NFC).
|
| In addition, the annoyance of these gates comes from having to
| fiddle with the wallet, etc. in order to find the card or the
| phone, or the fact that multiples tries may be required for the
| reader to actually read it; not the 200ms it takes for the reader
| to do so. I'm going to bet that faster NFC bandwidth makes the
| entire thing even more finicky, not less.
|
| If you really want to speed how people go through the gates, then
| _remove the damn gates_. It's not rocket science, and there are
| some European cities that have _no_ gates in their underground
| systems. Munchen comes to mind, but even in London less central
| stations have no gates. Beat that.
|
| In addition , the article bashes NXP for using obscurity as a
| defense, then goes to praise Felica, whose apparently main
| barrier of defense is:
|
| > the crypto is proprietary, and probably buried underneath a
| mountain of NDAs, so the public can't audit it independently.
|
| This is literally the definition of security by obscurity. When I
| read the two examples set by the author, my only possible
| conclusion is that security by obscurity actually works, but only
| when you can keep it actually obscure. The only problem is that
| NXP failed to keep their algorithms obscure while apparently
| FeliCa did. It is basically the opposite conclusion to what the
| author is trying to convince me to believe. I find it totally
| unjustified to blame NXP for trying to keep the algorithm obscure
| by the courts when apparently FeliCa also does it -- just much
| more successfully.
|
| Note: I personally consider MIFARE classic being _almost_
| trivially clonable a requirement.
| Aeolun wrote:
| The absense of a negative is not a positive. It could be
| secure, or it could not. On the whole I'm inclined to believe
| that _if_ it could be broken, it would have been in my
| lifetime.
| Washuu wrote:
| > In addition, the annoyance of these gates comes from having
| to fiddle with the wallet, etc. in order to find the card or
| the phone, or the fact that multiples tries may be required for
| the reader to actually read it;
|
| The NFC readers on the gates in Japan will read cards from
| several centimeters away. My phone, which has Osaifu-Keitai
| setup, can be left in my bag and I just wave my bag over the
| reader as I walk by. It is incredibly rare for a misread to
| occur. They just work.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| No, they don't. Even TFA itself points that the moment you
| have two cards in close proximity, the reader will read
| nothing (and he points this as if it was a feature). This is
| why I have to stop and take my cards out of the wallet every
| time I want to go in.
| numpad0 wrote:
| try these[1], they go between cards and prevent the one
| behind it from being read.
|
| 1: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%94%B9%E6%9C%AD%E3%82
| %A8%...
| askvictor wrote:
| Many gates in Japan are open by default, and close if they
| detect someone trying to go through without tapping/inserting
| ticket/incorrect ticket. I'm not sure why it's not all of them
| though. But the whole system is built for speed/throughput.
| Smaller stations outside the cities don't have gates
| soruly wrote:
| Bi-directional gates are always open by default. One-way gate
| would close after a certain time to prevent people coming
| from the wrong side.
| phh wrote:
| With regards to latency, in Paris the biggest hurdle to
| increase trafic is people. You can quite literally walk through
| like on the Japanese video linked. But the vast majority don't.
|
| The way it's supposed to work is that if you pass your card
| while the gate is opened, it keeps the gate open longer.
|
| In practice most people wait for the gate to close in front of
| them before reopening it.
|
| I'm not sure why people do fgaf. I think the reason is that
| this makes you look like a fraudster going right behind a valid
| passenger.
| psalaun wrote:
| I do wait because I'm sure that my ticket is validated, and
| therefore won't be fined by a controller. Sometimes the
| machine visual/sound signal is broken, so no way to be 100%
| sure.
| phh wrote:
| Makes sense. I've already been controlled several times
| after validating through a broken machine without any
| issue. But yeah it looks like the tide is changing and they
| are starting to fine for their own faults.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Maybe because I started my public transportation life in Japan
| I prefer gates to no gates
|
| (1) it means people pay for usage. Someone going 20km pays more
| than someone going 1km since they have proof where you entered.
|
| (2) it prevents more accidents/fines? - I had this happen to me
| in Paris, maybe because I was used to Japan. I was going to
| Paris Disneyland. I wrongly assumed I couldn't get there
| without going through a gate. I got on the subway, followed the
| signs in the tunnels to some train in Chatelet les Halles, was
| on the train, showed up at Paris Disneyland, was told I had to
| pay a 3x fine for not having the correct ticket. Or I could get
| on the train, go back to Paris, get the correct ticket, then
| come back (2hrs?) In Japan, for the most part, I couldn't have
| gotten on the train without a ticket and if I did go further
| than I paid can just adjust my fare at the end. No fines needed
| or imposed.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I find this a very thin argument, even thinner than the one
| coming from the authorities claiming rampant ticket fraud. I
| travel by train a shitton through all of Europe, and I have
| _never_ had the issue of boarding a train without knowing if
| I had a valid ticket for it. And even in the cities w/o gates
| there is some expectation that you will have to validate the
| ticket somewhere, at your leisure. Do you ever board street
| trams, for example?
|
| For the record, I am French. I used to be proud that nothing
| physical prevented you from boarding a train you had no
| ticket for. But, IMHO sadly, people like me have lost,
| because now trains also have ticket gates in France, which
| means that I:
|
| A) No longer can accompany my ailing relatives to their train
| seats if I don't have a ticket myself (/as I could twenty
| years ago)
|
| B) No longer can board the train when all my hands are full
| with luggage (since I need a free hand to search for the
| ticket in my wallet/bags to go through the damn machine).
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > I travel by train a shitton through all of Europe, and I
| have _never_ had the issue of boarding a train without
| knowing if I had a valid ticket for it.
|
| Like I said, I was used to Japan. I couldn't have boarded a
| train without passing through a gate for which I would have
| needed a ticket. As pointed out above, that happened in
| Paris. At no point between the metro and the train was
| their any barrier preventing me from getting on the train
| without a ticket. Just a tunnel with labels directly to the
| train. Being used to Japan, I assumed therefore I could
| work out out at my destination since there wasn't even a
| ticket purchasing place that I would notice, between those
| 2 spots.
|
| You need to remember, people who have not used your system
| (tourists) will have to make every mistake possible. I
| prefer a system that allows less mistakes as well as a
| system that lets me fix my mistake. You seem to prefer
| systems that require you to make a mistake once and get
| fined, and then learn how to use the system from the
| mistake.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Yes, slowing down native users of public transportation
| because of tourists is a big, popular movement in places
| like Paris. /s
|
| To transform your argument: why do my partially-disabled
| relatives now need to walk by themselves to their train
| seats? Just so that people who don't even read the
| instructions do not make a mistake that is going to
| result in a slap on the wrist fine (if anything, cause
| few revisors are going to fine you if you look touristy
| enough) ?
|
| The only thing I keep hearing is how having no barriers
| at all is just intrinsically better, and difficulties
| with getting used which such system look like very minor
| compared to the difficulties with moving from a system
| with no barriers to a system with barriers, not
| mentioning the disadvantages for users.
| lxgr wrote:
| > If you really want to speed how people go through the gates,
| then _remove the damn gates_.
|
| That comes with other problems.
|
| Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with
| instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is
| valid or not.
|
| I've seen tourists get in trouble with ticket inspectors at
| least once in a very unpleasant way for simply having pressed
| the wrong button at an inscrutable ticket vending machine.
|
| > I don't understand -- we are talking about 100ms or so of
| latency? which is almost completely dwarfed by any mechanical
| action such as the gates actually opening??
|
| As others have already said, Japanese gates are open by
| default, and are more of a user interface indicator (to you and
| potentially station attendants nearby) than an actual physical
| barrier. You could step over or between the "barrier" that
| extends when the gate rejects your payment pretty easily in
| most, but it would be very obvious that you're skipping the
| fare.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Transit gates have the big advantage of providing you with
| instant feedback on whether your ticket or mode of payment is
| valid or not.
|
| So do the validators that are put in waiting areas, inside
| the trains, etc. in cities with no gates. That you can
| literally use at the time you want to use them (waiting for
| the train, inside the train, etc. ) , rather than forcing a
| bottleneck to everyone.
|
| > As others have already said, Japanese gates are open by
| default
|
| And this by itself already makes more of a latency difference
| than the entire IC card system does. Imagine what removing
| the gates altogether does.
| lxgr wrote:
| How would removing the gate improve latency in a scenario
| where every passenger still has to tap their card at some
| reader?
|
| Sure, you could spread the readers out a bit better across
| the platform etc., but that significantly weakens the
| "impossible to accidentally evade the fare" UX, as it still
| allows people to forget to tap when rushing for a train.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Many cities already have this. Most street trams have
| already this. Even London has no gates for the non-
| central stations. I tap either when I'm waiting for the
| tram, or when I'm literally already inside it. Even with
| only one validator and at rush hour, there's no queue.
|
| If you already live in an area where there are no gates,
| would you make the argument that "I need gates so that I
| don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you would
| laugh at the idea.
|
| And it doesn't need mentioning that people who want to
| intentionally skip fare can do so, gates or not.
| lxgr wrote:
| Different transit systems have different user experience,
| yes.
|
| > would you make the argument that "I need gates so that
| I don't forget to tap"? Put yourself in my shoes: you
| would laugh at the idea.
|
| Yes, I'm making that argument. I've lived in places that
| don't have transit gates for the majority of my life, and
| I absolutely forgot buying a ticket a few times (since I
| usually have a monthly pass).
|
| Being reminded about a monthly pass having run out by the
| gate, automatically charging for a single ride (if I have
| enough balance) so I can solve the problem later, is
| great UX.
| aikinai wrote:
| The comparison video is kind of pointless since they're both at
| very slow times. If you see a Tokyo gate at rush hour with
| people packed wall-to-wall but moving quickly, that's what the
| latency was optimized for. And as others have mentioned, it's
| two things, speed and distance. FeliCa triggers both faster and
| farther away. And it never errors; you just made up that
| assumption. Also in Japan no one walks up to the gate and then
| fiddles with their wallet. Everyone knows proper transit
| etiquette from when they're very little.
|
| Sometimes people will be low on balance and get rejected.
| People reroute quickly in normal conditions, but in rush hour
| that'll be a huge mess and everyone will be pissed at the
| culprit.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| What you are describing is exactly all the problems with
| gates. Having them open-by-default improves somewhat. Having
| 100ms less reading time improves nothing. You are still
| limited by the speed of everyone else (cultural aspects are
| irrelevant as they are not improved by reader tech). If you
| want to improve entry throughput, have _no gate at all_ so
| that people do not have to bottleneck there. If you really
| have to put a validator, put it elsewhere.
| lazide wrote:
| And where would you put it? Anywhere you can think of would
| just be another (usually narrower) bottleneck.
|
| In most stations, every available inch of width is used for
| these 'gates', and people move at a walking pace through
| them except for when people screw up. It's a remarkably
| effective system.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44014412 to
| merge discussions.
| lazide wrote:
| It doesn't work in high traffic areas, because the tap
| areas become impossible to get to if people actually use
| them - same bottle neck problem.
|
| On busses they are de-facto soft gates, assuming the bus
| driver yells at you if you don't use it - which often
| they do.
|
| And why would they give up that sweet sweet rush hour
| revenue?
| sejin8642 wrote:
| I understand your criticism since it seems that you never
| visited Japan, Tokyo specifically, before. The train/subway
| entrance gate is open by default. So if your ticket or IC card
| or phone didn't get registered properly because you don't have
| enough fund, the gate closes. And there are a lot of people
| that use the metro during rush hours, and when I said a lot, I
| mean it is basically a sea of people flowing through. And when
| those people are trying to get onto the platform, you want to
| make sure they walk past through the gates like they are just
| walking on street. Very fast scan with open gate makes it
| possible. You don't wait at the gate because you don't have to
| wait for ticket scan and gate door opening.
|
| Also, if you use an iPhone (i don't have any experience with
| Android phone in Japan so I can't speak for it) to scan, you
| don't have to unlock the phone to use it. You simply reach into
| your pocket to grab your phone, and put the phone near the gate
| scanner as you approach the gate, and it scans instantly really
| fast (I was actually surprised how fast it was compared to the
| ones in Seoul). The experience feels like you are just walking
| through a narrow passage without any hindrance.
|
| I also like your suggestion to remove the gates. When I visited
| Germany and Austria I really liked the subway there (no gates,
| and it even operates past midnight!). I saw only one ticket
| inspector out of probably about 20 subway rides when I was
| there, but it seems to work just fine. I am afraid such system
| might be abused in countries like Korea or China.
|
| add: I also just realized that no gate system wouldn't work in
| Japan or Korea because during rush hour there is no way for
| ticket inspector to check the tickets of passengers on train.
| You are squeezed in each train unit like sardines squeezed in
| tin can.
| wolfd wrote:
| The gates are extremely fast, and you don't need to wait at all
| when you tap your card. In practice, this ends up being a
| pretty big deal for the number of passengers going through some
| of those gates. The whole experience is noticeably faster than
| any other ticket gate I've been through.
| ranma42 wrote:
| > Since there's no point in generating keys for a device which
| will not be used in Japan, non-Japan SKUs don't have Osaifu-
| Keitai functionality. So even if you rooted your phone and had
| full access to the secure element, if your phone's secure element
| doesn't have the key, you can't use it as an IC card.
|
| At least in some cases it is sufficient to change the phone SKU
| id (which requires temporary rooting) to the Japan SKU id to
| unlock the Osaifu-Keitai functionality on a non-Japan phone. I'm
| not sure if this means that the secure element had the necessary
| keys provisioned all along, or just that the Osaifu-Keitai app
| then provisions it on first use.
| dadadad100 wrote:
| I believe it is the case that US (at least) iPhones work as IC
| cards in Japan
|
| Source - I'm sitting in Kyoto right now having travelled all
| over Tokyo and then on to Kyoto using only my phone to interact
| with Japan Rail. Verified with two 16Es and a 12. In fact we
| were able to add the Suica cards to our phones and charge them
| fromApplePay while still stateside. That let us skip the
| Welcome Suica line at Haneda and go straight to the monorail.
| Highly recommended
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Yes, all iPhones and Apple Watches carry the functionality
| regardless of where you buy them, which has been wonderful
| for me. The fact that the iOS Wallet app can generate these
| cards as needed and reload them without a third party app is
| a cherry on top -- so nice to for once get a standardized UI
| instead of having to deal with some half baked transit
| service app.
| notpushkin wrote:
| I believe Google is trying to do that with their
| Wallet/Pay/Wallet app, but I guess it doesn't support
| FeliCa yet? They do support some weird card formats, so I
| guess they have at least some flexibility there - no idea
| why they can't add it, too.
| lxgr wrote:
| A broadly supported tap-to-pay fare system is such an
| underrated accessibility win for public transit when
| traveling.
|
| Many tourists already get intimidated by language barriers
| and inscrutable timetables and transit routes; add tariff
| complexity (and the chance of getting charged with fare
| evasion!), and many just end up taking a taxi.
|
| With these stored-value systems, you pretty much don't have
| to ever worry about doing anything wrong as long as you
| properly tapped in (and have the necessary cash to top up the
| card at the exit turnstile if you ended up "overdrafting"
| your card).
|
| Now the remaining complexity is learning about and getting
| the card in the first place, and Apple Wallet really does an
| amazing job there in Japan. Not even having to install an app
| or create any account is absolutely amazing.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| You can now make cards and top up from inside Apple Wallet
| (even with a non Japanese phone or account)
| dwood_dev wrote:
| Not sure if it's still the case, but last year I could
| only top up with my AmericanExpress in Apple Wallet.
| Neither Visa nor MasterCard worked. This was a widespread
| issue at the time.
| lxgr wrote:
| I had no issues with either Visa or Mastercard last year,
| but I believe I went just after that issue was resolved.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| FWIW I reloaded the Suica on my iPhone a few times in the
| past 2-3 weeks using my Apple Card (Mastercard) as the
| funding source and it worked fine.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, it's great! My point is that Apple's implementation
| solves all these challenges, sorry if that wasn't clear.
| coolcase wrote:
| They are OK. I find Sydney ones more reliably tap, plus you can
| use just a credit card to tap, as well as use a credit card to
| buy the Opal card. You can buy the opal card at 100s of places
| not just train stations. The actual transport itself is better in
| Tokyo tho.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I like how in Sydney you can just tap on and tap off (in a lot
| of situation) without a gate. Like the light rail, you don't
| have to have all the pressure of getting through a gate with
| 100 people behind you like in Tokyo.
|
| When your card fails in Tokyo, it's such a stressful event, and
| you have to do that "huff, turn around & stomp off" thing
| everyone does...
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _"The London Underground gates don 't work nearly as quick with
| Google Pay or any of my other contactless cards - what gives?"_
|
| They used to (and still do?) work faster with the Oyster fare
| card. Virtually instant. But paying with EMV cards/devices does
| add a noticable transaction latency before the gate opens. A few
| hundred milliseconds, I'd say.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's because for EMV, they need to run asymmetric card
| authentication algorithms, which unfortunately exclusively use
| RSA. That's just not very fast to do on the type of
| microcontroller common in these cards.
|
| EMV also uses faster symmetric cryptography between the card
| and the issuer, but the latter is not in the picture in a
| transit gate transaction - too much latency - so asymmetric
| cryptography it is.
|
| That's also the reason some (mostly older, mostly
| international) cards don't work with TfL: Some don't even have
| the coprocessor (or just additional processing power these
| days, I suspect) required for RSA to cut cost, and only work
| for online payment transactions.
| jddj wrote:
| Is nfc via google/apple wallet faster then?
| lxgr wrote:
| Apple Pay uses hardware secure elements, so the same
| limitations largely apply.
|
| Google Pay emulates the card on the application processor,
| so theoretically it could be faster, but I wouldn't be
| surprised if anything won in terms of more performant RSA
| cryptography is lost to higher command processing latency
| between the NFC interface and application processor.
|
| It would be interesting for somebody to do a latency
| comparison between Apple Pay, Google Pay, and a physical
| card!
| ValentineC wrote:
| Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to
| their cloud?
|
| Google Pay only allows a certain number of offline
| transactions (around three or so, I think) before I'm
| required to turn off airplane mode and authenticate with
| their servers.
|
| I believe this also allows it to work with more phones,
| and get around security and possibly also regulatory
| requirements, since there's less need for a really secure
| secure enclave on NFC devices.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to
| their cloud?
|
| Not on a per transaction basis, or you couldn't make any
| offline payments (i.e. with your phone being offline; the
| terminal can usually not be offline for Apple or Google
| Pay in the way that it can for cards). Latency would
| probably also be too high/variable.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I think I must be mis-understanding something
|
| > Since there's no point in generating keys for a device which
| will not be used in Japan, non-Japan SKUs don't have Osaifu-
| Keitai functionality.
|
| AFAIK, all iPhones from all regions since like iPhone 10
| (internet says iPhone 7) support Osaifu-Kaitai unless I don't
| understand what that means. My USA iPhones works everywhere
| Suika, Pasmo, Icoca, etc work. Every station, bus, vending
| machine, convenience store, super market, restaurant, and retail
| store that accept these forms of payment, they all just work.
|
| Given that all of this works, what is it I'm missing?
| artdigital wrote:
| iPhones yes, Android no. Most Android devices sold outside of
| Japan can't use FeliCa so you have to get the Japan model for
| osaifu-keitai stuff
| dal wrote:
| Also my western Google pixel pro 9XL does not support it..while
| the Japanese version does. I guess google might be saving on
| the licensing or something.
| delfinom wrote:
| If you want to root your Pixel to enable it:
|
| https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel
| lxgr wrote:
| Apple is the exception here. What's missing for all other
| phones not targeted to the Japanese market are the agreements
| between any non-Apple device manufacturer and the Japanese IC
| card issuers (JR East for Suica etc.)
|
| Since these cards actually "store money offline", the symmetric
| keys involved are really not something the issuers ever want to
| see leaked, so I assume it's not only a question of money (i.e.
| licensing fees), but also trust in the security posture of the
| secure element of the phone (if it even has one; many Android
| phones don't).
| aecsocket wrote:
| Author here, this is my fault for not proof reading this part
| properly! The part about non-Japan SKUs is generally true for
| Android phone manufacturers, but Apple eats the cost and gives
| all phones Osaifi-Keitai. You do not need to root an iPhone to
| get this functionality, even on a non-Japan unit.
|
| I will write a correction for this section to clear up the
| confusion.
| delfinom wrote:
| AFAI, many Android phones have Osaifu-Kaitai support outside
| of the US just sitting there. I think if there is a key
| generation fee, it's at setup time of a wallet and not just
| physical phone's existence.
|
| I rooted my US model Pixel 9 Pro on my Japan trip last year
| to enable it. :D Literally a boolean in a config file.
|
| https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel
|
| (The author's write up has more theories on why Google blocks
| it on non-Japan SKUs)
| aecsocket wrote:
| This is an interesting find and the author's ideas make
| sense to me. I can't confirm them of course, this is all
| probably hidden behind legal documents, but I've updated
| the article to a link with this repo. Thanks for the link!
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's iPhone 8 and SE 2 onwards. iPhone 7 was the first but they
| had to be the Japanese special. Non-Japanese 7(at least the
| early batches of) and SE 1 don't support Suica payments.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Not mentioned is the cards currently in use in Japan, "icoca". A
| pun on "ikouka" - "shall we go?"
| amelius wrote:
| As in, "will this train run?"?
| RajT88 wrote:
| Do not think so. That would be a different verb form -rareru
| thrance wrote:
| The public transport cards here in Paris also use NFC. This means
| you can use your phone to recharge them, or use your phone
| directly to access the subway network. As far as speed goes, your
| card/phone is detected pretty much instantly when you tap it on
| the sensor, at least when the gate isn't broken.
|
| The only time I ever had to wait in line to get into the station
| was after a stadium event, which is understandable. Rest of the
| time, you can pass the gates almost without stopping.
| lxgr wrote:
| > [...] conflict avoidance - a reader can detect when it's
| reading more than 1 FeliCa card at a time, and prevent any
| reading if so [...]
|
| That must be one of the things that ISO 14443 has improved on
| then, compared to FeliCa:
|
| At least 14443-A (and I believe also B) allows addressing each
| card in the field individually by its serial number, and then
| selectively "halt" or resume it. Practically, this means that the
| reader can talk to cards one by one until it finds the one it's
| interested in (if any).
|
| Unfortunately I don't know any practical system making use of
| that (it could get pretty confusing with payment cards, for
| example - charging a random card of several possible ones sounds
| like an anti-feature), but I still find it very neat.
| raluk wrote:
| One problem with fast writing is that it requres more energy to
| transmit from reader to a card in order for a card that has no
| internal source of power, to toggle bits. It is harder compared
| to just reading a bit from a card. Additonaly it is tricky to
| implement trasaction with single write, given that data transfer
| can be interrupted (for example user removes card from RF field).
| I am not sure if single write is enough for making this
| robust/transactional. It also helps a lot if RFID antenna is well
| tuned. Proximity of metal and way it is mounted has a big impact,
| so it is important that RF antenna for reader is tuned for exact
| environment it is mounted in.
| lxgr wrote:
| > One problem with fast writing is that it requres more energy
| to transmit from reader to a card in order for a card that has
| no internal source of power, to toggle bits.
|
| Contactless cards manage to boot up a JVM and run bytecode with
| the energy provided by the field, and many also run RSA with
| fairly large keys. I doubt that toggling some bits in an EEPROM
| factors in too much.
|
| > I am not sure if single write is enough for making this
| robust/transactional.
|
| Transactions are usually implemented via some form of two-phase
| commit, I believe, to support what's called "tear resistance".
| If the transaction is incomplete, the reader tells you and you
| just tap the same card at the same gate again.
|
| Not sure about the implementation, but the feature is supported
| by all contactless stored-value cards I'm aware of.
| aikinai wrote:
| The iOS and Android part was hard to follow, so I'm not sure if
| the article is wrong or just unclear. All iPhones since iPhone 7
| support FeliCa regardless of the phone region. This is incredibly
| convenient for visitors to Japan.
|
| On the other hand, Android phones only support it if they are
| Japan-region phones.
| delfinom wrote:
| Yes that is correct.
|
| Patents hold it back on Android. Apple just got themselves a
| licensing deal that apparently lets them just have it on all
| phones.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Note that on global Pixels it isn't hard to enable, either
| via root or flashing Japanese variants of the factory images.
| xuki wrote:
| This is such a Hacker News comment.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Yes I'm not claiming it's ideal, it'd be nice not to
| worry about such things as a tourist, it can't be that
| hard or expensive for Google to just let everyone use the
| feature.
|
| But at least if you move to Japan, you can essentially
| get a Japanese flavored Pixel at the small cost of a
| factory unlock/relock.
| pauldino wrote:
| The iPhone is really big in Japan (it's one of the few
| countries where it has a higher market share than in the US)
| which probably makes it more worthwhile for Apple
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I do wonder who it is that has all of these android phones
| in the US (nearly 40% by the statistics). In my extended
| friend group only one person other than me uses an Android
| phone.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _I do wonder who it is that has all of these android
| phones in the US (nearly 40% by the statistics)._
|
| I'm guessing it's largely the working class and
| undocumented immigrants. And probably lots of burner
| phones?
| neckro23 wrote:
| Android is overwhelmingly preferred by working-class
| people, in my experience. The phones are simply cheaper.
| ulfw wrote:
| Or more powerful and more expensive, such as every single
| foldable phone on the market, including my Oppo Find N5.
| supertrope wrote:
| People who can't afford to spend $599 on a phone. Or
| those who can afford it but can send picture messages all
| the same on a phone that costs hundreds less.
| aikinai wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. It's supported on local phones
| for both iOS and Android. What iOS does that's special is
| enable FeliCa for all regions globally. It only affects
| people from outside Japan traveling there.1
|
| Since it's not free for them, I assume they determined the
| amount of people in their key demographic that visit Japan
| was worth providing a stellar experience. Considering 2.7
| million Americans visited last year, it was probably a bet
| that's paying off.
|
| 1 Or, incidentally, people who live there but purchase
| phones overseas to avoid an obnoxious camera shutter sound
| forced on at all times.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think it's more like difference in commitment to product
| and sales model between Apple and every other phone
| manufacturers. Apple really commits deeply into making
| singular globally unified phones and rejecting pressures to
| make carrier branded bastard children of iPhone. None of
| Android phone manufacturers are as committed - even Google -
| and so unnecessary features gets removed from non-Japanese
| phones, even the same models were sold globally as well as in
| Japan(not always the case as Japanese businesspeople
| generally hate more to think about exports than about lost
| opportunities and there had historically been obscenely
| abundant supply of Japan-only electronics).
|
| It's surprising that it can be added back on Pixels, I
| thought it would use something like factory generated
| certificates.
| SuperShibe wrote:
| It's probably more of a licensing fee thing, just editing
| the SKU in the deviceinfo partition of a global Pixel
| suffices to enable Osaifu Keitai. It's the same hardware
| everywhere, only licensing restrictions.
| ynx wrote:
| All iPhones worldwide since iPhone 8, Japanese iPhones starting
| from iPhone 7.
|
| Source: I had an iPhone 7, and was friends with one of the
| engineers who added FeliCa support to the secure enclave. The
| Japanese 7 was a one-off until the 8 made it ubiquitous.
| lxgr wrote:
| Oh, nice! I wish you/they could share some war stories from
| that, but the combination of Apple and smartcard industry
| NDAs probably make that inadvisable.
|
| I love the technology, but I'm not a fan of the culture of
| security by obscurity in that industry. What's worst is that
| it's at this point mostly unnecessary! Modern smart cards
| largely use standard algorithms and would probably hold up
| just as well or even better with their details publicly
| documented.
|
| Also, small nit: Secure element. The secure enclave is
| Apple's cryptography and key management coprocessor running
| an L4-based OS; a secure element is a (generally not Apple
| specific) smartcard-like hardened microcontroller that can be
| embedded in devices, usually as part of the SoC of a
| contactless microcontroller.
|
| The secure enclave primarily holds the user's and Apple's
| keys; the secure element can also hold somebody else's, e.g.
| payment or IC card issuers'. The latter is (somewhat
| ironically, given the name) somebody's trusted enclave in an
| otherwise untrusted device.
| aecsocket wrote:
| I didn't make this clear enough in the article, sorry for the
| mix-up! Yes, iPhones support Osaifu-Keitai, and it's Android
| phones which have this problem. I've now updated the article to
| clarify this.
| mrb wrote:
| _" what makes Japan's transit card system (IC cards) so unique
| compared to the West"_
|
| Actually other western transit system cards are similar to
| Japan's. For example in Paris the transit passes (Navigo cards)
| are stored-value systems and hold a record of the last few scans
| (three I think). You can also read them with any NFC smartphone
| and see what's stored inside. The tap at the entrance of a
| transit vehicle is near instant as the reader doesn't need to
| interact with a backend since everything is stored on the card
| itself.
| delfinom wrote:
| Yea but the Japanese IC card system has complete interop
| between all transit systems run by completely different private
| companies. So you can hop on a train from one city to another
| and then hop on a bus in that new city on the other side of the
| country all using the same card.
|
| And a good chunk of vending machines in Japan accept the IC
| card. Sometimes even food shops a step above vending machines.
| soruly wrote:
| Japan has lots of IC cards in various regions, and they have
| spent a lot of effort integrating their system. Unfortunately
| some IC cards like Kumamon decided to opt-out due to high
| maintenance fees.
|
| AFAIK, you can go through up to 4 different company networks
| once you enter paid-area. Beyond that, you'll need to do the
| override settlement (Cheng riYue shiJing Suan ) with the help
| of station staff.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_Mutual_Usage_Servic.
| ..
| mifydev wrote:
| Just visiting Japan, just realised that IC cards are super fast
| compared to London, crazy relevant article!
| barnabee wrote:
| They're definitely faster, which is nice and surely
| preferable...
|
| _But_ the London Underground gates are fast enough, with
| enough space from the reader to the gate, that if you're ready
| (and the gate isn't congested) there's no need to slow down
| even from a very brisk walk to pass through.
| emursebrian wrote:
| I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in
| performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and tapping
| with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card. There were never
| lines at the gates. There were only ever brief lines at the
| ticket counters and terminals. I was there during golden week,
| which is one of the busiest travel times of the year. My travel
| partner and I used almost exclusively public transportation to
| get around, usually riding a few trains per-day. We only
| experienced one two-minute delay in Tokyo on a Friday evening
| during rush hour.
|
| Japan's transportation infrastructure is great!
| ksec wrote:
| >I just got back from Japan. I did not notice a difference in
| performance between tapping with a Blink credit card and
| tapping with an IC card. I only used the ICOCA card.
|
| Unless things have changed, the ICOCA uses Felica as well. And
| old Offline Credit Card transactions used to be 200-300ms.
| Compared to Felica that is sub 100ms. May be offline
| transactions for credit card have gotten faster? Or may be not
| latency sensitive enough to notice the lag.
| ksec wrote:
| I still remember when Apple announced their FeliCa support. And
| FeliCa became NFC-F standard there is a potential of Apple Wallet
| and Apple Cash ( Before both were announced ) for world wide
| usage to fight against the march of QR Code.
|
| They could have a store value card that works worldwide.
| Effectively bringing Octopus or Suica card to the world.
|
| I even remember there were proposal for future version of Felica
| that works under 10ms. Although I cant seem to find any reference
| of it.
|
| There is also a new NFC proposal ( again my google fu is not
| helping ) that allows multiple NFC card / tags to be read at the
| same time. So we can do Membership card, discount card and
| payment card all in one. And hopefully someday we could have
| electronics receipt right on our phone alongside the payment
| record as well. Something I wished Apple have done for the past
| 10 years but they still haven't gotten Apple Card or Apple Cash
| to work outside of US.
| f_devd wrote:
| > There is also a new NFC proposal ( again my google fu is not
| helping ) that allows multiple NFC card / tags to be read at
| the same time
|
| This is already in standard NFC-A/B, usually just called the
| 'collision avoidance' or 'select' protocol, effectively doing a
| binary search over the uid space (iirc) asking particular
| bitmasks of uids to respond. The main thing is that it used on
| the reader side, not the (emulated) card side so I'm not sure
| what the support for multiple emulated cards is like (and if
| there is a different proposal for that).
| ishanjain28 wrote:
| In India, The NCMC cards for transit use the same technology.
| They considered allowing people to use their normal bank issued
| cards like the public transit in Singapore and decided against it
| because of potential fraud issues.
|
| Right now, some ncmc card issuers allow validating the card using
| your phone so you don't have to go to the kiosk after topping up
| and they are working on letting people use their phones.
| kirici wrote:
| I've recently returned from a trip across the country and liked
| everything about my (physical) ICOCA card, except that the
| machines used to charge it, at least the ones I've found, only
| accepted cash.
|
| After charging it once with a decent balance though, I got away
| (almost) entirely without cash using it in combination with a
| virtual credit card via NFC, save for street food carts and
| Gachapon machines.
| soruly wrote:
| There are charging machines that accept cash cards / debit
| cards, but only those issued by Japanese banks. So cash is the
| only option for touristists. You can go completely cash-less if
| you can use mobile Suica / ICOCA, which let's you charge your
| phone with Apple Pay / Google Pay (with osaifu-keitai).
| Marsymars wrote:
| I did think it was kind of funny when I'd use a single machine
| to withdraw cash from my bank account and then deposit the cash
| right back in to load it onto my IC card.
| lorenzotenti wrote:
| What really stands out is the difference in design philosophy. In
| London, the gates are normally closed and only open if your
| Oyster card is valid. In Tokyo, the gates are open by default and
| only close if your card fails. You don't have to wait for doors
| to open and close every time--it just keeps the flow moving and
| feels way faster.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| It's a subtle but very impactful difference. Japanese faregates
| also typically have two sets of doors, allowing them to close
| in front of you whichever direction you are moving. So people
| can go through at a fast pace and very tightly spaced, and the
| door still closes in front of the correct person.
|
| They also have the display screens located farther ahead so you
| don't have to stop walking to see how much fare you were
| charged.
| suddenexample wrote:
| That's only enabled by the difference in culture though, right?
| Japanese culture has a much higher emphasis on order and
| following the rules - I don't know that this "open-by-default"
| system would work in, for instance, the US.
| astrange wrote:
| Japanese transit-using society is old and middle-class; those
| are the kind of people who follow rules.
|
| Americans are often more rule bound than Japanese people (we
| have HOAs and Nextdoor), but we just don't respect transit
| systems as much because we think of them as gifts we give to
| the poor/mentally ill/homeless.
|
| And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification
| ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots" or "neighborhood
| character") which says that anything made for poor people
| must be kept old and dirty or else rich people will show up
| and take it away from them.
| isatty wrote:
| Japanese transit using society is not all old and middle
| class: it's pretty much everyone who is not filthy rich
| isn't it?
| astrange wrote:
| Old meaning not young. Pretty much all crimes or any
| other forms of messy behavior worldwide are committed by
| young men.
|
| But the median age in NYC is 38 and Tokyo is 45. (source:
| two Google searches I just did). That means a lot!
|
| It's true they don't jump the gates often and they don't
| have loud panhandlers. Instead the societal transit ills
| are passed out drunks, suicides and molesters. (Not
| meaning these actually happen all the time, it's just my
| impression of what people talk about.)
|
| > it's pretty much everyone who is not filthy rich isn't
| it?
|
| Hmm, it's more about what you're doing, I think? Rich
| people use transit all the time if it serves their
| purposes afaik. One thing that helps in Japan is the
| culture of wearing face masks means you won't be
| recognized in public. (Obviously this doesn't work if
| you're like a 7' NBA player.)
|
| For going between cities the trains are actually the nice
| expensive option, and flying or taking a night bus is
| cheaper.
|
| But trains are also basically only good at carrying
| yourself. If you're traveling in a group, or carrying
| equipment with you, or don't want to walk a lot then
| you'd still want to drive or take a taxi locally.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Pretty much all crimes or any other forms of messy
| behavior worldwide are committed by young men.
|
| Pretty much all?
| mlinhares wrote:
| I had never noticed it like that but now I'm dead.
|
| When I moved to my current neighborhood I asked why there
| was no public transportation and someone said it was so
| poor people couldn't be around and I hadn't connected this
| to the wider culture.
| kanbankaren wrote:
| > current neighborhood
|
| Context please? Which country and city?
| presentation wrote:
| I assume US, city doesn't matter since this is the
| default opinion for most NIMBY suburban Americans in all
| US cities.
| mlinhares wrote:
| A suburb in southern winter garden, FL.
| mmooss wrote:
| I was talking to someone about some existing bicycle road
| infrastructure that ran through several neighborhoods,
| rich and poor, in a large city. They said when it first
| was built, some people in the rich neighborhood objected
| because they said criminals would use it to come to their
| neighborhood. (The city is mostly on a grid, including
| this neighborhood, making the whole idea absurd anyway.)
|
| I had long ago pointed out to them that much of the bike
| infrastructure connects wealthy neighborhoods with
| wealthy neighborhoods.
| mmooss wrote:
| > we just don't respect transit systems as much because we
| think of them as gifts we give to the poor/mentally
| ill/homeless.
|
| > And then a lot of Americans have an anti-gentrification
| ideology ("rent-lowering gunshots"
|
| I think the ideology is in the parent comment. I ride lots
| of public transit and don't hear or see these things. The
| largest American public transit system, in NYC, certainly
| isn't seen as a gift other than by New Yorkers to
| themselves.
|
| FWIW, I've seen American transit systems that let people
| board without even being asked to pay. I've seen plenty of
| bus drivers wave through people who couldn't pay. On one
| bus a teen boarded and walked straight to their seat. The
| bus driver, in an authoritative parental voice, kept
| summoning them to the front. There they lectured them: It's
| ok, but you need to talk to me first.
| mmooss wrote:
| As I said in another comment, I've used US systems where you
| board the vehicle (bus/train) before paying, and bus drivers
| wave you past if you can't pay. On the train, you get a free
| ride to the next stop.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| On the Phoenix area light rail the only way they (used to,
| at least) tell if you have a valid ticket is random
| security patrols checking everyone on the train. No gates,
| no nothing.
|
| During covid they even stopped checking the validity of the
| tickets and all you needed was to be in possession of 'a
| ticket' -- I used the same one for a couple years and still
| have the thing in my wallet in case I ever go back there
| again.
|
| Couldn't even begin to count the number of times I saw
| people get off the train as soon as they saw security get
| on and just wait for the next train.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| Please don't read too much into it. Outside of the peak
| demand at least here, in Kansai area, gates will close when
| they sense you approaching to indicate that you actually need
| to touch the card or insert a ticket. They stay open only if
| there is a continuous flow of passengers going one after
| another.
|
| Another interesting fact is that gates' actuators are not
| super rigid and it's completely possible to force enter not
| realizing in time your card has failed (you will be
| approached by station attendant though).
|
| To summarize, culture may play a role but the main
| differentiator is the high traffic volume.
| numpad0 wrote:
| They probably needed that delay to hold back users while
| payment is processed. Japanese gates were likewise shaped as
| they are, originally, to buy time to read the magnetic tape
| tickets.
| robert3005 wrote:
| You don't have to wait for the doors to close to be able to
| scan your ticket in London Underground. The gate will stay open
| and let you through. It's a little bit awkward since you have
| to approach as you scan your ticket leading to your hand
| lagging behind
| movedx wrote:
| You raise a good point here.
|
| There's a degree of trust here, too. Trust placed on the
| consumer to do the right thing and pay. I'd also say there's an
| additional consideration being put forward by the operator:
| sometimes people just need a ride every now and then. I've been
| Japan three times now and I've seen several incidents of the
| guards letting people just walk through without a ticket
| because they explained some situation.
| m-schuetz wrote:
| I've went through gates without ticket several times for
| reasons like access to coin lockers or switching to the other
| track when I've entered the wrong one. Gate guards usually
| hand you a slip that explains the situation at the other gate
| or when leaving again.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I've had the opposite: I entered a large station at the
| west entrance as a transfer from a local train run by a
| different company. The platform I needed was next to the
| east entrance. Fine. On the platform was a sign (in
| English!) reminding tourists they needed a seat
| reservation, which I hadn't purchased.
|
| The sign said the machine to issue the seat supplements was
| at the east entrance -- the other side of the gates from
| me, of course.
|
| The guard at the gates understood me, but said I must exit
| back the way I came, i.e. all the way back to the west
| entrance. That side of the station 'belonged' to the other
| railway company, and there wasn't a machine to sell the
| ticket I needed. I could either walk the really long way
| around by road (not through the station) or queue at the
| general ticket office.
|
| So I missed that train.
|
| In general, I found the train ticketing system for regional
| or long-distance trains needlessly complicated compared to
| Europe, with base tickets, express supplements and seat
| reservations all separate fees, and coming as 1, 2 or 3
| bits of paper depending on I know not what.
|
| On one occasion a journey with a transfer came on 7
| separate tickets. (Of course, the Japanese approach to this
| problem is not to simplify the ticketing system, but to
| invent a machine that can suck in all 7 tickets, cancel the
| relevant ones, and discharge them neatly arranged.)
| m-schuetz wrote:
| I fully agree that the base fare + whatever on top type
| of ticketing system is needlessly complex and confusing.
| We've almost missed a train because we were not aware we
| needed to buy base fare separately, and only found out
| because we asked a station employee for the way to the
| tracks who then informed us we're missing some tickets.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| In Hong Kong the gates are closed but spring into action much
| more quickly than in London (though a lot of MTR stations have
| turnstiles still)
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It is so strange to think that there are places where the trains
| have gates that close if you can't pay your fare somehow. I've
| never lived in such a place.
|
| The light rail here in Phoenix was established in 2008. Since
| then it's been on an "honor system" fare payment regime. There
| are bright orange lines painted on the ground and you must not
| cross the line until you've paid your fare! Then, in the station
| or on the train, you may be approached by a Fare Inspector (these
| are specialized jobs) who wears blue and wields an electronic
| scanner box.
|
| If you haven't paid your fare then you may receive a warning, and
| you're usually expelled at the next station. Personally, I've
| never seen anyone receive more than a verbal warning, such as a
| citation or a police visit.
|
| Recently the entire transit system underwent "fare modernization"
| and now most riders are on the mobile app or an NFC card. The app
| uses QR codes only, much to my chagrin. The little kiosks that
| are supposed to scan QRs are very, very reluctant to accept mine,
| for some reason.
|
| Therefore it may take me 30 seconds up to 4-5 minutes before the
| kiosk beeps green and takes my fare. (The fare is prepaid in an
| account, but scanning/tapping will deduct it from that account
| and acknowledge your presence in the station/bus.)
|
| It is 100% operator discretion whether you can board a bus. So
| every time I try with my mobile app, there is a rigmarole where
| the operator shares their favorite troubleshooting steps for
| scanning (which never work because it's not my fault) and then
| they wave me aboard, whether paid or not. Because the other
| passengers hate waiting behind a dude who's fiddling with his
| phone.
|
| I often see passengers just walk into a train station without
| tapping/scanning. I have no idea how they do that. I think
| they're just not bothering to pay their fare. But again, we don't
| have gates or turnstiles, only some menacing orange lines on the
| ground, and we're all still on the "honor system", so anything
| goes.
|
| Honestly it does not seem to me like the stations could be
| redesigned to have any sort of barrier gates. People would just
| jaywalk and cross the tracks anyway. I suppose the taxpayer
| subsidies are so significant that they don't really care about
| collecting all the fares they could.
| soruly wrote:
| Suica has a pretty large sensing distance (85mm). So it can
| "power up" the card at a distance before getting close to the
| reader.
|
| To avoid large touch area causing accidental touches, places like
| vending machine requires you to keep your card within sensing
| area for up to 1 second before completing the transaction.
|
| reference:
| https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/suzukij/1316685....
|
| Speed test between magnetic ticket / IC Card / Credit Card
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAQM5NNnCi4
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > When I first read about the fact that the card stores its value
| on itself
|
| Buried the lede in case anyone missed it.
|
| When you cut out the network and are working with essentially
| exact amount cash, things can be processed fast.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I really wish China would go the IC approach rather than the QR
| code approach. Just tapping my phone in Tokyo was much easier
| than getting into Alipay and bringing up the QR code for metro
| use. Well, still better than the Seattle which still doesn't
| support iPhone transit pay.
| miki123211 wrote:
| I wonder whether it is possible to make a fake card that
| generates a new key / ID / whatever on each use.
|
| If so, this would completely break the offline part of the
| system. You couldn't rely on hotlists of known-hacked cards any
| more, you'd need to check each (new) card with a central system
| to see if its key was ever actually issued to anybody.
|
| This is assuming there's an actual list of currently issued keys
| anywhere, if such a list doesn't exist, the whole system would be
| done for.
|
| The fact that some smartphones can emulate NFC-F doesn't help
| either. If a hacking technique is ever discovered, we can get
| from the system being fully secure, to anybody being able to
| issue themselves undetectable cards for any amount, in the matter
| of days.
|
| With counterfeit physical cards, you can at least try to shut
| down manufacturers and issue long prison sentences to the dealers
| selling them on the black market. The criminal activity has to
| happen in the country where the cards are used by definition, so
| that country can bring its law enforcement to bear. If all you
| have is an Android apk and some source code released by three
| guys in Russia, there's very little you can do.
|
| If such a system were designed in the 2020s, you could establish
| a CA-like system, where each card's key must be signed by a chain
| of certificates. This way, thoroughly hacking just one card
| wouldn't help, as its key could easily be revoked, and you
| couldn't issue new ones without hacking the (presumably
| airgapped) card manufacturing systems that contain the signing
| keys. I don't think a system from the late '80s does this,
| though.
| dmitrysergeyev wrote:
| NYC subway tap-to-pay via Apple Pay is also instant. Like,
| actually, instant (<500ms)
| asimops wrote:
| Since all Pixel phones have the FeliCa build in, I would have
| loved for GrapheneOS to just enable that in their builds for all
| phones. It would have been one patch to a library call, so that
| it always returns true. But I found an issue where the team sadly
| dicided against it :( I still loved the system when visiting
| Japan and would wish that Germany had something alike.
| vardai wrote:
| Have you ever considered eliminating gates from public transport
| entirely, as is done in Vienna?
| commandersaki wrote:
| Can't they protect the stored value in the card against
| manipulation by way of digital signature? Or does this not make
| sense because then readers controlled by 3rd parties would have
| the private key.
| grishka wrote:
| I'm not sure about the speed argument. My city uses stored-value
| cards based on Mifare Classic and Mifare Plus (depending on the
| type of the ticket). If you live here and use the public transit
| with any regularity, you don't stop when you're going through the
| turnstile. The card validation isn't _instant_ by any means, but
| it takes just enough time that you can plop your card on the
| reader as soon as you can reach it and keep walking, and it 'll
| be done by the time you need to rotate the thingy that's in your
| way. On most stations, the bottleneck isn't the turnstiles, it's
| the escalators.
|
| On the security side, yeah, someone did exploit those Mifare key
| extraction vulnerabilities and make an app to clone cards and
| restore dumps. The system collates all data every night so if you
| mess with your ticket, it'll get banned. So you're getting one
| day of free rides at most, _and_ forfeit the remaining balance
| and the cost of the card itself.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Late to the party. These cards are stored-value ones. And they
| seem to be very secure.
|
| Does this mean that the offline digital cash problem has been
| solved, as far as in-person customer to merchant payment system
| goes?
|
| You can trust an arbitrary person giving you money through the
| card just as well as if they gave you cash. Could you turn this
| into a pay-anyone-money using cards and card readers?
| lyall wrote:
| The whole system is quite tightly controlled by the transit
| companies (e.g. JR East). For example, your average payment
| terminal can take money off of a card but not load money onto
| it (refunds have to be done out of band). Loading money onto
| cards is more privileged, as it's equivalent to printing money.
|
| One other limitation in place is that these transit cards have
| a limit of Y=20,000 (~140 USD) max that can be loaded on to
| them. So any transaction larger than that is out of the
| question.
|
| So to answer your question, no this isn't really a person-to-
| person cash replacement. It's a transit card that happens to be
| able to be used as an offline payment method, but it's got
| various limitations and weirdness that prevent it from being
| something more.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I am not saying this particular system is good enough for
| person-to-person cash. But..
|
| The primary problems that digital cash has to solve is
| double-spending. Debit/credit cards solve this problem by
| confirming the transaction with the central server over the
| internet. Credits cards used to solve this problem by
| trusting that someone's signature could not be replicated,
| but this was obviously insecure. Some cryptocurrencies solve
| this problem by confirming transactions with a public
| distributed ledger.
|
| This system is solving the double-spend problem preventing
| the holder of the card from, as per OP,
|
| > cloning (can't read the keys)
|
| > a successful attack on another card (each card has its own
| keys)
|
| > replay attacks (per-session unique keys are generated in
| the challenge/response)
|
| So the secure enclave on these cards prevent double-spend.
|
| However, it seems like the card reading machine has to be
| trusted in the current implementation, because it can extract
| an arbitrary amount of cash from your card. This prevents
| arbitrary peer-to-peer transactions. But this seems like a
| much easier problem to solve.
| mmooss wrote:
| Referring to the Osaifu-Keitai part of the article:
|
| > A lot of this is thanks to FelicaDude (Reddit, Twitter), an
| anonymous internet stranger who disappeared a few years ago but
| seems to have a lot of knowledge about how FeliCa works. I can't
| verify any of this information, but it makes sense to me; and
| anyway, there's no way someone would lie on the internet, right?
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Compare the speed of passing through a ticket gate on the
| Underground to a Tokyo ticket gate
|
| The video in London is showing tourists/visitors, since they all
| have paper tickets and half of them are fumbling around. The
| Japanese video shows people familiar with the system.
|
| The Japanese gates are certainly faster, but not as much as
| shown.
| kccqzy wrote:
| From the user experience perspective, the Bay Area Clipper card
| might be the closest to these IC cards in Asia. It's also a
| stored value card. The official Clipper app allows you to
| transfer the card to be an NFC card on the phone and inspect the
| value on it, entirely offline. (Of course to support the use case
| of automatically adding value to the card when it's below the
| threshold necessarily requires the fare reader to be internet
| connected, but such an internet connection is not on the critical
| path.) From my Apple Watch there is even no need to press any
| button to activate (unlike Apple Pay EMV transactions): just hold
| the watch next to the reader and it works. They are weirder than
| other public transport payment systems like Chicago CTA or NYC
| MTA, and are also more wonderful.
| pkage wrote:
| The DC Metro system operates similarly.
| hoppp wrote:
| How is it compared to the Danish rejsekort? That works kind of
| similar, its very fast too
| Symbiote wrote:
| Japan's cards are faster and are accepted in convenience shops.
|
| However, in Denmark many passengers (commuters with weekly or
| longer tickets, people with smartphone tickets, people with
| paper tickets) don't need to do anything at all when they leave
| a train as there aren't any barriers, and that can't be beaten
| for speed.
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