Hong Kong's Octopus

Reuters is carrying an interesting story about Hong Kong's Octopus smart card system, which serves as a mass-transit fare card and is now being accepted by merchants for small purchases. A magazine cover story from last year goes more into depth. Interesting to note that the system started off anonymous, and is now being converted into a personally-trackable system.

Comments

The "uniqueness" of HK

[batkid]

How appropriate, I am now in HK and I have an octopus card in my wallet!

It is a very well received device from what I experienced. It works really well in HK but I doubt that it will work as well in other countries/cities.

What makes HK unique is the high concentration of people in a "homogenous" society. Being a "special administration region" under China, efficency has a higher priority over privacy. I personally think that it is a wonderful system for HK, but not very well suited for North America.

So is this like the system in Singapore?

[thogard]

The Signapore goverment has a system that has been cracked wide open. Its not a major problem because if you get caught, your in jail for decades and can never get a job. The result is most of the people who have the ability to casually hack the system aren't about to even try.

Once cool thing with these (and Mondex) is that if you lose the card, someone else keeps the cash. Anyone who has ever worked in a student ID office or drivers license department can tell you how offten people lose these things.

So far no one has built a smart card that has enough grunt to do real hard crypto in a reasonable about of time while making the chip so it can't be inspected in a way to find out its secrets. We have a long way to go before someone comes up with a contactless card that can do a transaction faster than two people who are good at handling cash.

Re:DC Metro system had this

[DNS-and-BIND]

The only down side is that, cause it works so well and is so transparent, you don't really keep track of how much money is left on the card and you find yourself adding more money to the card too frequently.

Casinos require their patrons to change cash into chips for much the same reason. Four green chips on the table just don't make the same impression that a $100 bill does. It's easier to play with the colorful markers and not realize you're losing real money. The line at the cashier to change chips back into cash is also another way to part you and your money.

Slot clubs work much the same way. Anyone who plays a lot of slots hates dealing with the mass of coins that a big win produces. Only amateurs are impressed with the shower of coins like that produced by machines in the movies. "Real" casinos (read: casinos for people who live close by and play a LOT) don't use cash at all, just a "Dave & Buster's" type card that inserts to the machine and the central computer notes your ID and keeps track of your wins (ha!) and losses.

Smart Cards in Tokyo

[cjs]

Here in Tokyo, Japan Railways East introduced a contactless smart card called "Suica" last year. It's particularly convenient because one card can serve as both a stored value card and a commuter pass. When part of my trip uses the line for which I have a commuter pass, I swipe the card at the end of the journey and it deducts for only that portion of the journey that was not using my commuter line.

Unfortunately, this card, though good on JR, can't be used on the subways or private railways. But I hear that this may be coming.

The biggest cellphone provider here, Docomo, is set to introduce a contactless smart card chip in its new mobile phones later this year, which should be particularly interesting.

cjs