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Sony's Cashless Smart Card Catching on in Japan
Spasemunki writes "The New York Times reports here on the success in Japan of an RF-based, cash replacement smart card developed by Sony. Used primarily by Japan's largest railway company, the cards carry a declining cash balance (no link to your credit card or bank account if it is lost or stolen), and conducts transactions at railway turnstiles in 1/5 of a second. Mass transit remains one of the big areas for many folks where you just can't live without cash- this would be a big improvement over digging in the couch for exact change ... "
Who needs photocopiers and engravers, when you can just "hack" some funds!
With smart-card readers integrated into your computers, will this be the solution to the great micropayment problem? (Similar things have appeared on prev. /. stories, so idea not mine)
Or will somebody spam your computers with viruses to steal your money then?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Huh? NY has had metrocard for years, it's successful, disposeable, and considered a fairly resounding success and can be linked to cash or credit, giving you a range of options, some of which are beneficial to the consumer (you can let someone else use your card free.) I guess if it has a chip though it should be cool.
:)
The token is dead. Cash is dying. off topic, the dollar is dying, in particular...
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
Japanese commuters have had plastic travel since around 1991 in most Tokyo stations, paid directly by your company. The only reason you would buy a ticket is to use a route other than your regular commuter one.
News a bit thin today?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
..until american authorities interpret this little rise in a non-american economy as act of terrorism?
While the money in this instance is anonymous, is anyone else reminded of those scanners from Minority Report that just "pinged" you as you walk by? I wouldn't like the idea of being forced to walk around carrying RF-emitting devices. If I wanted to, by all means, but I would rather this not become the norm, personally.
Finally people are making systems which they know might be cracked. After doing power analasis of processors I would not be happy if my bank said that the data is fully secure and no one can break into it. I would prefair if they said well people could break into it but they will only be able to steal x ammount before the card is canceled.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
There's so many cool ideas that only Japan seems to have.
I think this is one of them.
Japanese citizens seem almost Zenlike in thier capacity to accept such civilised ideas.
By comparison, in much of the rest of the world, this idea won't work simply because of the cultural background.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Now the banks can actually collect interest on the money in your pocket!
If you lose your card and noone else finds it, the money goes to the banks as well!
A win-win situation!
X.
Hong Kong has had a similar system for years - the Octopus card. An RF smartcard where you can add money when you need them. Your balance can even go in minus for a couple of trips until the next time you get a chance to fill it up (the card has a 50HKD deposit).
Does this mean that if you get stuck in a revolving door, you go broke quick?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
We've got this for quite a few years now in belgium. All small stores have cardreaders now. Parking meters, payphones, cola machines, even movie theaters. I rarely carry cash anymore. The only disadvantages so far are that it doesn't work (yet) outside belgium, and that the readers seem to be a bit more fragile than coin-operated machines. The coke machine in our building has a crashed card reader once every 2 week. But apparently the machine resets itself every day, so the next morning they're back OK.
For the merchants, the advantage is 2fold : no cash in the store so less attractive to thieves, but also there is no permanent connection needed with the bank : the cardreader can store the balance internally, and upload a transaction log at the end of the day. This makes proton payment a lot cheaper for the merchants (payment by visa costs a percentage, and payment by bankcard costs a fixed fee)
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Visa and MC work because there's a single standard with multiple providers. Everybody takes Visa, nobody says "Oh, whoa, hey, we don't take the GM Visa, we only take the Wachovia Visa." So there's a massive hurdle to overcome for cash cards to really catch on. You want to make a generic cash card that people can use anywhere. But if you do that, then naturally you will want to fill it with more cash...which, in turn, makes it more risky to lose it, which makes less people want to sponsor them. Note that I don't say "to use them", because I think that people would put $100+ on a cash card and want to use it to go shopping (think of the new "gift cards" that people get for the mall). I said sponsor because once you get beyond a certain amount, if somebody loses it, they're gonna scream and say "I don't care about your policy, I demand you get me my money back."
Know what I mean? What's a good solution that that problem? I suppose the solution is for Visa to sponsor a cash card, which seems like it would be very similar to the whole "debit card" concept that caught on very rapidly once the banks were able to say "Use your checking account money just like Visa."
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Do you want these cashless smart cards to "catch on" in America too? Call them X-treme Cash Cards! Apparently the only way to get people to buy something here is to call it X-treme, Extreme, etc..., and to inform your target market that your product doesn't support terrorists. And while you're at it, give them a few designs to choose from: Avril Lavigne, Goody Mob, Dixie Chicks, and Dale Earnhardt so they can express their individuality (very important).
As soon as these things start getting stolen through violence, the sheeple will line up for their cashless laser tattoo forehead bar codes. I give it five years tops.
"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"
-- Paul Wolfowitz, 7/21/2003
Japan in general, and the Tokyo area in particular, has had a form of prepaid card for use at train stations for several years. These cards are of the "magnetic stripe" type, and have to be fed through the ticket gate to work. The ticket gates have a tendency to jam occasionally, requiring human intervention to get them working again.
The main advantage of the Suica cards is that they just have to be held against a panel on the ticket gate - as they're RF based, there's no moving parts to get jammed.
The main disadvantage of these particular cards is that they don't offer the same flexibility in routes that the "old" cards have - you have to be travelling between two JR (Japan Rail) stations to be able to use them. I commute on a train that switches from a JR train to a subway train (separate organization - same train) halfway along my route, which means I can't use the Suica cards.
In spite of what the article says, I haven't really noticed them being used for anything other than commuting.
I want to place one in one of my windows. Outside there's a crowded sidewalk. I am sure noone would mind me getting one cent for every person walking by, as I am sure they never will discover it.
my sig
They are currently testing this on the underground in London:
_ ca rd.shtml
http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk/tfl/oyster
I know I should have been there this time of night but we had this party, anyway, I was walking down 8th street and this guys jumps out of the alleyway, points this box at me, it had these glowing lights, like, oh, you know, those led thingys? And it went 'beep beep' - I didn't think anything of it but now my smart card is empty!! I had $89.45 in it and now it's all gone!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
.... and I can tell you first hand these are pretty darn efficient. After all, having a train pass is just for a set point A to point B, but with the Suica Card, you just use it whenever you need to. I still prefer to use my bike when I can, but when I take the train I see more and more people using the Suica card. Of course to get the card it costs about 2000 yen (20 bucks give or take) but once you have it you don't need to get another.
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
conducts transactions at railway turnstiles in 1/5 of a second
:D
Can we make the transactions take more time to execute. Id like to have a stripper to be in front of me for several minutes before charges on my account are deducted.
later,
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
Bell Canada has been selling cash smart cards for use in public phones for a while now...
Sig ?
The Netherlands have this for like 5 years. Ok no RF, but it has a chip in it. And its finally catching on, mostly because parking lot and train ticket devices require it. Actually I only have to carry 'real money' when going to a club or so. Oh, and instead of credit cards we use bank cards with PIN, which work better also (minimum fraud). So just 2 plastic cards is what you need.
Certainly something to be concerned about, as discussed in RFID tags. At the same time does this open a new market for those wanting to remain anonymous? For example, a small metal wallet to contain your smart cards that acts as a Faraday cage. Or a home scanner that zaps RFID tags rendering them useless. Or a detector that alerts the wearer to any devices trying to read smartcards and RFID. For the truely paranoid, it could set off a jammer. The ideas are endless, patent pending.
In response to Japan's cahsfree smart card, the Bush administration is unveiling the cashfree school. The main difference from the old system is the replacement of funding with tax breaks. No longer will you have to attend a properly funded school. Instead you can stop paying taxes on dividends, and send your kids to a private school. This is sure to help American workers' employers' CEO's rich uncles. And fight terrorism.
Do me a favor and double it!
This issue was raised re: the Octopus card in Hong Kong as well. What prevents people from just wandering around lifting 'cash' out of people's contactless cards is that ultimately they have to get the real cash from the entity that collected it. Sure, you can go around trying to take money from people's Suica cards, but then you're going to approach JR East and ask them to give you real money? All you have is a bunch of long encrypted strings.
we'v got this in the santiago subway for about a month now: http://www.multivia.cl/index.htm (site is in spanish)
I was in Japan this time last year and I used the RF/Prox card for the metro, as well as the traditional magnetic strip tickets. The card is very quick indeed to get through the turnstyles, but the normal ticket system can easily cope with the levels of use and is also just as fast. The only way this benefits the customer is missing the queues to buy/adjust the ticket value at the beginning/end of the journey.
Where I live here in Edinburgh, the busses have a similar sort of card (time, not distance based though) and it takes easily a full two seconds before it registers the pass which is slower than paying by cash. It does forfeit the problem of having to dig up correct change before walking out the door though.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
Not half as annoying as you, fuckwit.
Now go off yourself and save us the trouble of putting up with your sorry ass.
should be after conquering the Iraq
Just got my speedpass timex watch - no more key tag - I'll prolly give that to my wife - the windw tage never did work on my dodge neon's back window, so that was out.
I like the idea of speedpass being used at gas and other small place - mcd's, dunkin's - for the most part if I lose it, the money is safe (so they say so far) and what's the worst someone could do - buy a tank of gas, drive for a day then buy another - i'd figure it out by then.
Plus anyone who has a debit card and uses it for purchases AND atms - it wears out about halfway thru it's expiration date from people treating it like a sanding tool at the checkout.
Negroponte told a neat story a few years back - about the ski pass rfid's in switzerland - he went to pull out cash at a small store to buy some chocolate, and was fishing for change and the cashier saw his spent ski pass - he offered to take it for the payment - nn asked why, and the guy said they're worth 5 francs deposit when you turn them back - when pressed, the cashier said he piles them up and pays the bread vendor - the bread vendor piles up piles from the stores he delivers to , one of which was the ski resort, and turns them in en masse!
it was nn's arguement for how micropayments are easier than we think. speedpass isn't exactly micropayments given the price of petrol, but it's close, easy, cheaper for the shop (debit vs credit) and certainly easy for me.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As people have already stated, this kind of technology is already in use in many Asian countries (e.g. Hong Kong and Singapore) and even in old Europe :) It's not just for transportation (bus, train, taxi, parking, etc), it's also used for small purchases (e.g. 7-Eleven).
There is no personal tracking involved - nobody knows who owns a card (a card might have a unique ID on it, but you don't give any form of identification to buy a card).
Do you yanks ever wonder that perhaps your rabid paranoia about privacy is perhaps getting in the way of progress? (I can hear growling from here...)
Malaysia has the exact same system which is used for paying road toll, bus fares and for Light Rail Transit ticket. It's also been extended to be used in Car Parks. It's called the Touch-N-GO card
Here in Belgium we have a system called Proton. I don't know about the US, but Proton is just a chip on your credit card where you can put a limited amount of Euros on. (125 if I'm not mistaken, about 128 Dollars). Once the money is on the chip there's no way to take it off other than spending it. The advantage is you never have to type a code for your smaller spendings ...
... However, you can't block the Protonchip, you can block the account of course, but since the money is on the chip and not the account ...
This is a great system, you don't have to have any cash on you, you can track where your money is spent if somebody steals your card
Life is great! (as told by Lady Susan)
It's been around a couple of years here, though hasn't catched on that much.. since for small stores deployment cost is a bit.. and they still have the cost of handling cash since everyone won't switch cash-cards at once. I have cash-chip in my visa-card, so for stores that support cash-chip i can pay fast without any PIN or so.. otherwise i'll resort to the slow visa-payment method..
Cards with cash on them? Imagine what you could do with a Beowulf cluster of those! ;)
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
They're called Touch n Go cards here in Malaysia.
:).
http://www.touchngo.com.my/
They can be used for the light rail transport in the capital, highway toll booths (proximity or stick them in a gadget aka smartTAG that allows remote deduction/payment at up to 40kph[1]), a few parking lots and you can reload them at certain bank ATMs.
Of course there are the usual complaints of double deductions etc.
And I wonder about pranksters deducting from cards just for fun (you often don't need to take the card out of your wallet/purse for it to work).
Also wonder if the organized crime syndicates have figured out a way to "make money".
Link.
[1] If the transaction doesn't go through the toll bar doesn't go up, so caution is encouraged
baka gajin, YOU FAIL IT
now go run from some terrorists or something
The MTR in HK has this - buy an Octopus card for (refundable deposit) HK$50, use it up buy sweeping it over entry and exit to train stations or on buses, and top it up when it gets low (balance displayed on each sweep).
Obscure.co.nz - Dance music in New Zealand
The Chicago Transit Authority already uses these. They've been going cashless for at least 5 years and have had the non-swiping cards for about a year.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA -- busses and
trains) offers this system. It's called the
"Chicago Card". Being the owner of both a Suica
Card and a Chicago Card, I can attest that the
two systems work virtually identical. Chicago
has the advantage that you can use the card on
busses. Tokyo has the advantage of having a vastly
more extensive rail system.
See www.transitchicago.com
So can anyone provide an easy explanation why these can't get cracked?
If money is stored in the card, then the right device could put money into it by altering the balance.
I was thinking the only way to prevent this would be to check the balance with the transaction database before accepting any transactions... but in 1/5th of a second, accomplishing this would seem unlikely.
This would be hard to implement with the current metrocards in NYC because it would require you to swipe both on the way in and the way out.
Yes, especially since you won't need to carry the couch with you on the train.
must... stay... awake...
according to this cnn article, apparantly hong kong is also highly utilizing smart cards...even in their railway system.
So old we pulled the plug on it a half-decade ago.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
In Hong Kong many housing estates, offices and schools are using the Octopus card for identification. There are 9 million cards in Hong Kong with a population of only 7 million. One of the reasons is that some people require two cards - perhaps one for the office and travel, maybe another for the housing estate.
I went to a conference recently and I was required to register with my Octopus Card to get entry to the conference floor. It was useful because I went back later in the week and of course I had the card with me so got without any re-registering.
School kids use them to get into school and a roll call is instantly made up. Entry and exit to the school can then be monitored. This is not so different from the access cards I have used at several offices - the difference is that I've had my Octpus card for years now and theoretically all the transactions, travel, entry and entrance could be recorded. A bit scarey I admit.
However there is no link back to me. There is no name attached to the card, and no connection with a bank account. So there is a limit to the amount of data o be tracked.
There are a lot of uses for the cards.... it is pretty good technology.... except that they in effect have a monopoly and charge 10% commission on the sales going through there system. Imagine having a monopoly on cash and making a profit everytime you used your coins and notes.
I think you will find that there will be more and more of these cards used. Already Nokia has built it into some of their phones in Hong Kong, you can buy watches with it built in - people like it - very easy, no coins, no need to rummage around for the train ticket just wave your wallet at the gate. Ditto for keys to the office, home - soon perhaps your car. They're already used for payment at car parks and soon car meters.
People won't resist this so the best thing is to build in safeguards, walls between systems so no accumulation of data is made unduly.
Face it - it's coming. It's here in Hong Kong now.
Contrast this with RF car. I see all sorts of problems. The least of these problems is there is not explicit act needed, other than to just walk into a room, to have a fare removed. A bigger problem is a thief with a bit of equipment at the street corner stealing money from the card. If this were an automated task, and cards were in wide use, a thief could transfer a dollar from each card into his account, and empty his account by the end of the day before anyone was the wiser. I realize that there safeguards that may make it difficult for the thief to actually get the cash, but that does not help the people that were robbed. If a retailer were to be the theif, say radomly deducting money from browsers cash cards, we would have real problems.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
GO Transit in Ontario, Canada, has implemented a similar system on its Richmond Hill line, as a test.
GO uses a Proof of Payment system -- you buy your tickets, and then "cancel" one ride off a multi-ride ticket before you get on the train, and you have to prove to the inspector, if she checks, that you have purchased and cancelled your tickets.
The Smart Card system that GO uses is great -- it can store up to 255 pre-paid rides and 2 monthly passes (ie, one for this month and one for next month). To cancel your ride, you don't even need to take it out of you wallet -- just hold the wallet up to the card reader. The machines work far faster and with much less downtime than the old style of "punching your tickets" ride cancellers. Even providing proof of payment is as simple as letting the inspector scan your card with a handheld card reader.
It's a great system and I hope they replace the old system on the other lines soon.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
...no, we don't have cash smart cards. But one or two cellphone operators are experimenting with systems that allow you to buy tickets for public transport (mostly buses) using a cellphone. You just have dial a certain number (depends on whether it's an one-hour or 30-day ticket etc) and you'll get an SMS to prove that you have paid for your ride. An alternative version of this includes a magnetic card so you wouldn't have to show your cellphone to the ticket collector. The price of the ticket is added to your phonebill. I haven't used this thing myself, but the bus company say it's more popular than they expected.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Maybe. But maybe there's a reason not everybody uses the unstable application releases or the newest development kernel, either. How much progress is lost when everyone jumps on the latest bandwagon at once and finds out that it doesn't support such a load, or that in practice it's not the greatest idea, or maybe that this "progress" just isn't what people want. (Shocking, I know, to find people have different opnions on the subject, but it can happen).
To respond in kind, did you ever think your (presumably european) idea of "progress" could be holding up actual progress-- like spending that time and money on things like medical research instead of tech research aimed/marketed at making day-to-day life for the somewhat-affluent even easier?
It's also worth mentioning that those cards contain real money. Real money isn't some proprietary invention of the United States. The "rest of the world" can certainly feel free to go along with "progress" if it likes. This isn't an imperial/metric system debate. This is money. Different countries use their own money anyway. Are you expecting an entire(ly different) culture to drop their views on a subject and do what you feel is in the best interest of progress, without so much as a valid argument regarding why? Shame on you. You should know better.
Pockets in Japan, however, are getting lighter with the growing use of integrated-circuit smart cards. The size of a credit card, they are packed with thin antennas and an encrypted integrated chip that can be used thousands of times to pay for train fares, meals at restaurants and snacks at convenience stores. In less than two years, nearly seven million people in Japan have started using one of two types of cards, both based on technology developed by Sony.
So far, the main client for the cards is JR East, the largest railway company in Japan. Nearly six million train and bus commuters have started using the first of the two types, known as Suica cards, since they were introduced 18 months ago. Although train riders in Hong Kong and Paris have been using that type of card for several years, Japan is the largest market yet to adopt them.
Their biggest selling point is speed. The card's antenna sends signals to readers at ticket gates, so no card-to-machine contact is needed. The entire transaction takes one-fifth of a second, faster than is possible with similar technology introduced by the Philips group.
"It's a marginal improvement, but our society is wealthy because of millions of these little improvements," said Jeffrey Funk, an associate professor of business at Kobe University who tracks wireless technology. "Taken together, they are part of the elimination of cash from society."
In the United States, toll collection systems like E-ZPass employ similar radio-wave technology, as does the Speedpass system, in which customers can pay for gasoline and convenience-store products at Exxon and Mobil service stations. Procter & Gamble, Gillette and other companies are now using the technology to track products from assembly line to store shelves.
JR East, which operates in the Tokyo area, spent 45 billion yen (about $384 million) to roll out Suica. Its hope is to save money: fewer coins means fewer security guards to haul them away. The card also cuts down on paper for tickets and on repairs to ticket-vending machines.
Suica, which requires a 500-yen deposit ($4.25), is essentially a debit card. Riders take the cards to vending machines and add as much money as they want. If the card is lost, the cash cannot be recovered, but there is no need to call a credit card company to cancel it because it is not linked to a specific account.
Within a year, JR East plans to add card readers to its bullet train ticket gates and to 500 of its fast food and convenience stores.
For the cards to generate more profits, experts say, credit capability would need to be added to allow shoppers to spend more freely. By and large, however, the Japanese prefer cash over credit. The Japanese fear that the government and aggressive marketers could use the cards to track their every purchase, and they like to keep a tight rein on debt.
"With the prepaid cards, I know how much I am spending," said Kotaro Matsuoka, a 22-year-old student who started using Suica last April. "If there was a credit function, I wouldn't know how much I owe. It's scary."
Companies are trying to make it more convenient to add money to the cards. Toward that end, Sony and 28 other companies have formed a joint venture called bitWallet, which created the Edy network. The network is based on the same technology used in the Suica cards, except that readers require contact with the cards. For 2,980 yen (about $25), consumers can buy a small reader that connects to a computer with a U.S.B. cable. They can log on to a secure Web site from home or the office and add money to their cards, sending the bill to their credit card issuer or bank account. The bitWallet venture also plans to l
I think the reason cash balances are stored on the cards, instead of on a central server, isn't primarily because of the speed. Of course it's also nice not to have to network, say, a vending machine, but the real reason is that to replace cash, these things have to be as anonymous as cash. That's hard to guarantee when every transaction you make is sent in to some computer.
Of course the security issue is important -- I'm sure whenever one person adds cash to their card we all end up paying for it, one way or another. Does anyone know just how difficult it would be to crack these things? (Hint: I'd like to hear something like 'mathematically impossible.')
As a side note, any potential identity theft problems sniffing those RF cards?
People have always been using "cash" in one form or another. This is just another form of "cash".
Follow the evolution:
1. People trading goods with one another, i.e. my 5 pounds of butter for your 4 pounds of cheese.
2. People using rare, precious objects, i.e. seashells, precious metals, round stone thingies.
3. People using coins.
4. People using paper money and cheques.
5. People using credit and debit cards.
The smart card is just another debit card, which is just another form of cash. To be truly cashless, you need to get rid of the concept of "legal tender" which is what "cash" basically is. But that wouldn't be a very good idea, unless you like the idea of foraging for food everyday.
0xB00F, the sound of a foam rubber mallet hitting your head.
I have a suica that lets me go anywhere, and you just charge it with cash ... I've had it for 12 months or so.
Servlet v2.4 container in a single 161KB jar file ? Try Winstone
Wait until the paranoiacs come out of the woodwork complaining about RF signals giving them cancer or something similar.
Hmmm.
The Ontario EDCO newsletter had a list of transit systems using smart cards (issue dated February,2000).
This sounds an awful lot like the Metro Card's that NYC has been using for busses and subways for years...
Who doesn't like free music?
A similar system in Singapore is used for the bus and rail system. On the bus, the full fare is deducted at entry, and balance refunded to you when you exit. If you forget to tap the card on the reader before you exit, the amount you were supposed to have been credited back is forfeit. Excellent way to increase revenues without actually increasing fares.
Speedpass is pretty much a "Mobil" only thing, though with the "ExxonMobil" acquisition, that might change. The proprietary solution problem still comes up.
Take your speedpass to BP, or Texaco, or whatever, and watch them ignore it. It would take more effort for them, AND they'd have to go into a contract with Mobil.
The other problem around here, that keeps me from using SpeedPass: All Mobil stations with speedpass charge more for gas than the non-Mobil non-speedpass ones. This may not be the case elsewhere.
--
This message no sig.
Their Octopus card, as poitned out is a great RF based card for not only the MTR [mass transit railway] - but it's slow seeping into 'normal' life - you can zap stuff at the 7-11 etc too, which is very cool for the late night snacks :D
What the article doesn't mention (or I missed) was how they plan to prevent unauthorized transactions. What's to stop someone from walking through the subway or mall with an antenna and grabbing $1 from everyone's wallet?
I'm not saying there aren't solutions to this problem, I'm just curious what solution in particular they are planning on using.
dan.
"This is nothing new, here in [city] our [subway | telephone company| coffeshop] has had cashless cards for [integer] years!"
But what people seem to be missing is a few sentences toward the end of the article, in particular, one form of these cards is...
accepted in 2,100 shops nationwide,
The greatest part about cash is that everyone accepts it. Try that with your railpass, phone card, or espresso card. Or better, try this..
log on to a secure Web site from home or the office and add money to their cards
This is something new, but most people are just missing the point.
Raisinettes are my raison d'etre
Thank you thank you. I'm here all week. Try the veal.
I didn't get a chance to take the train while I was there, but I know the busses work on this system. You was your card (or wallet) in front of the reader and it beeps. When you get off the bus, you wave it again, and the amount is deducted from the card, which can be refilled at a machine. (Bus travel in Singapore costs different amounts based on the distance you're travelling. If you don't have a card, you have to determine and prepay the amount, which is a pain.) As with everything there, if you try to cheat the system, you risk heavy fines.
They also sort of have this system in place for toll roads. When you pass through, you put your cash-card in a reader in your car (every car is required to have one) and drive through the toll road. The amount is automatically deducted.
Another thing is that general purpose cash cards haven't taken off in Finland even though they have been available for several years. I guess a central problem is that the banks charge the seller too much compared to the amount of money involved in a typical transaction. The end result is that almost everyone has the cash chip on his debit/credit card, but you can't use it because so few places accept it as a form of payment.
Paying for a service or product by cellphone is more common. You can for example buy a ticket for the tram or metro in Helsinki by an SMS text message. You get an SMS back that you can use to prove that you've paid the fare in case you run into a random ticket inspection. The fare is then charged on your next cellphone bill.
read about the actual implementation of the card. Many transportation card systems use a magnetic strip. Many electronic cash cards use a chip on a card. These must be fed into a card reader and are much slower. The RF card do not need any physical contact and are VERY efficient. They are also implemented in watches and cell phones, which is obviously impossible with the magnetic or chip based cards. They are used in Hong Kong, Tokyo and apparently Washington DC (maybe Singapore?), most of Europe is using the chip based cards. If you think that one or two seconds for a transaction with a chip card is quick, you should see the number of commuters in really crowded places like Hong Kong or Tokyo sometimes: every half second counts!
"No reaching for your wallet, or fumbling with change. Speedpass is accepted at over 7,700 Exxon and Mobil stations nationwide and at over 440 participating McDonald's restaurants in Chicago and Northwest Indiana"
http://www.timex.com/speedpass/
http://www.speedpass.com
Hoping to comment the right post this time..
We've had those smart cards in use in Finland for many years now. Most are city-specific, so you can't use them outside that particular city they are for. The uses for those smartcards are in electrical identification, so you don't need usernames and passwords, only a card and a pin number (and a cardreader), and mass transportation. You can also pay your purchases in some shops with those cards. Some can be read from a distance, so you don't have to take them out your wallet.
is introducing cards like these later this year. All the turnstiles have been modified & cards are being used by staff as a trial. Not sure of the actual released-to-the-public date.
Hmm... a stored value card for mass-transit fares. Brilliant. They were doing it in Washington, D. C. in 1999, probably earlier. The card was disposable, thick paper, and had a black (presumably magnetic) stripe, and they printed the remaining value ON the card when the reader spat the card out. Very helpful.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
You see this in every industry. It is one of the nastier side effects of "intellectual property" monopolies. The problem is that nobody will work together to create a standard, or stay together to improve it because there are inhernet risks that sharing information and collaberating cause when it's contributors can be locked out from the fruits of their own contributions.
You saw it with CPU's, BIOS, and PC's where the market was seriously fragmented until IBM came out with one that could be coppied without "intellectual property" liabilities. (notice, winntel wasn't the most elloquent technology, but succeded in the market place because it was least propriatary of all the options) You see this with AIDS research, where very few of the "big guys" are pooling resources to create a cure, and where all the R&D pushes into areas of "expensive solutions" that can be patented rather than cheaper ones that can't. We even saw this fragmenting and failure to cooperate with UNIX, that is, until Linux came out and is now causing everyone to standardize again (notice FreeBSD, was free too - but it didn't create forward momentum because it allowed for closed deravitives)
IMHO, getting rid of artifical copyright and patent monopolies is the quickest way to get the universal cooperation and collaberation society needs to move forward into the information age.
Translink cards (http://www.translink.org/) were conceved to provide one transit pass/cash card for use on all the different regonal transit systems, BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit ...
When testing is completed for transit at the end of the year, it is expected to be expanded for parking meters and store purchaces. If so may this lead to several competing regonal cash card systems.
So far, I think translink works great for the limited transit routes its being tested on. Best part is you just pass your wallet over the reader, no need to swipe a card.
I think that preventing abortions through better, safer, and more available birth control are a far better thing than preventing abortions through making them illegal. Abortion has existed for almost as long as female hominids had the smarts enough to figure out that certain plants were abortifacients. Make them illegal, and you will be seeing lots of horrifying consequences, of a kind that were a fact of life for women too poor to bribe a doctor to do an illegal abortion on the sly. Back alleys? Knitting needles? Coathangers? Women dying of septic shock and blood loss? Do you really want a return to these kind of consequences?
Yes, I know I'm offtopic. But I had to address this.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I have to say I'd be quite opposed to this system. While some people might not like to admit it, it's still a good idea to keep a stockpile of cash handy that isn't connected to any bank (preferably buried deep in the soil in the back garden). While a rush on the banks during a time of economic crisis can wipe out individuals savings, a person who keeps their cash close to them can avoid this. Essentially the smartcards will take away this safety net and force people to use banks, even those who for whatever pedantic eccentric reasons refuse to. So the smartcard is taking away your right to hold onto real cash in the same way that paper money took away your right to hold onto anything with any real intrinsic value (the gold standard). While smartcards are useful and convenient I definately think this should be an opt-in system. People who want to keep using cash should be allowed to continue doing so.
Actually, in America, there's a fair minority of folks who fear digital cash, because they believe that it's the penultimate step to the Mark Of The Beast. It is an interesting point that when the UPC was being invented, the scientists involved used the character "6" in the bar code to signal the beginning, middle and end of a UPC. Nothing ominous about that if you understand Geek Humor.
Also, in the '80s, these Fundie paranoiacs believed that the Mark Of The Beast would consist of a tattoed UPC-like symbol. In the "Left Behind" series by Fundie author Tim LaHaye, he postulates that the same kind of chips used to electronically tag dogs and cats would be used for this purpose.
And not many people know that back in the Roman Era, a soldier would be branded with his regimental mark on his right hand and his forehead during induction ceremonies. Think about that when someone babbles about how "The Mark of the Beast is coming, avoid using credit cards, ATMs and other digital monetary transactions!"
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The japanese can kick our asses in technology even with their economy in shambles.
the transit system in Seoul, Korea has a similar radio based card system. Very easy to use. Get on a bus or subway touch your bag or wallet to the reader and the trip is paid for.
Man, only Japan would be silly enough to use watermelon as a form of currency for traveling on the subways. Sheesh.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
it just pushes the payment to my debit/credit card.
yes there's an audit trail.
a new implementation could change that, but for non-trivial purchases, don't you want that? choose one:
a: "i swear I paid for that - see - it's right here on this statement"
b: "i swear i paid for that - see? it's right here on the record you have that shows that anyone on the planet might have deposited those funds. trust me."
the MYOB argument about who spent what is a juicy libertarian tidbit, but the reality of using money and proving payments is above and beyond that nicety.
just like you rarely would choose to put cash in a night deposit box, you want proof and trust on payments. a small price to pay for accountability.
also - starbucks is essentially a cash card - you push an amount it up then anyone can use it - but i keep mine on a very short leash - autoloading a very small amount - then if i do lose it, i may be out the difference between that very small amount and the limit until i discover it's gone - at which point i ditch it.
why use these (speedpass / sbucks)? on their part, it's all about loyalty. on my part? no service fees piling up on my checking account, immediate debiting, ease of use, one less receipt to stuff into my george castanza style wallet, accountability, relative safety, and ok the watch is cool. in the past weeks even the mobil employees at a half dozen stations (guess they didn't get the memo) were dropping their jaws.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
and i use it every day. blah.
www.translink.org
RF? (insert sound of alarm bells and blaring sirens) Gives the expression "follow the money" a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
In virtually every major city around the world there are similiar projects. Even smaller cities have had such cards in place for the public transit system. This isn't news worthy -- I think that the RF based toll way systems are much cooler. The one in the bay area, for instance, uses image recognition systems to determine the classification of vehicle you are driving. There are different tolls for cargo trucks than for a pickup truck towing a boat, even though they may have the same number of tires. It captures an image of the car that has pased through the toll gate and compares it's profile against the known classifications and assigns a toll value. Very neat.
Another neat application of RF card technology is the City Car Share network in San Francisco. It coordinates the real-time scheduling of communal cars that are parked in lots around the city. You just call the automated voice recognition system or log onto the website and reserve a car for a block of time. Cruise down to the car, flash your keychain dongle against the windshield, and jump in the car. When you are done you just drop the car off at the lot and pass the dongle over the window again and you've signaled your end of usage.
A RF based wallet card is hardly news. They've existed for years in a variety of forms. It is good to see that they're finally catching up to the rest of the world, though.
In Moscow, subway system have been using contactless RF Card since 1998. You wave the card at sensor and that's it (same as SpeedPass for gas station). Really fast, rechargeable, easy to use.
:)
They say one guy was hiding RF card uner his cap, and then amazed controller ladies by taking a bow in front of sensor. Of course it worked and it'd let him through
Hyperom.com
As everyone and his dog pointed out there are no shortage of similar cards elsewhere, but none of the names can match up with the profound punnery that applies to the Japanese card.
From another web site:
"Suica stands for Super Urban Intelligent Card, which has the double meaning of being an IC card that makes traveling smooth (sui-sui in Japanese)."
What they leave out though, is that the cards are a green and white colour, that of a Japanese watermelon, known as, wait for it... Suica!
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
You're assuming the person doing this would be doing it to gain financially.
Suppose they were just up to "mischief" or they had a political agenda (anti-capitalist or a spot of "micro-terrorism"?)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
It'll catch on here, if for no other reason than because it's profitable for businesses - They get to keep 'loose change', and such. See this article for details. (Non-WSJ link, to protest their 'registration required' policy)
A good candidate for issuing such a card is probably The Gift Certificate Company.
Ok, you can't get cash for it -- but, I don't know about this particular implementation, but unless the cards somehow authenticate the terminals/readers with a challenge/response protocol (in which case it would be hard to impersonate a reader to steal credits in the first place), perhaps you can simply store the tokens you stole ("long encrypted strings" as you called them) to retransmit them later to a legitimate reader? Hey, free transit! ^_^
Sure, this won't instantly make you rich, so the motivation isn't there as much... but if the protocol allows this, someone is bound to try it eventually!
"Words have meaning, and names have power." -- Lorien
Hong Kong and singapore have had similar technology (Octopus etc..) since the 90's on bus and rail systems. Allthough not RF based.
I use my Suica card every working day in part of my commute between Yokohama and Tokyo.
Once a month I renew my travel pass by placing the card in the machine in the station. The touch screen UI is quite sophisticated allowing you decide when the pass will start and giving you the choice of whether you need a reciept or not so that you can claim the cost on your expenses.
The best feature is that you can also "charge" the card with money and use it as a travel card outside of your normal route. i.e. If you pass for the journey between B to C and one day have to take the train from A to D i.e A-B-C-D it will deduct the charge for the A-B and C-D sections and not charge you for B-C which is covered by your pass.
Every station has notebook PC in the office where the station staff can take the card and look at it if there was a problem. During the first week of introduction there were a few glitches and the stationmaster reset the "bad" count on my card after my card prevented me from getting out of the station thinking that I had jumped the gate at the previous station.
Recently while playing with the machine in the station I found that it can give you a printout of your last 50 journies which could cause privacy concerns for some people.
Surprise surprise, no GNU smartcards yet.
The only thing smart is the banks / middlemans cut for a 3 way challenge authenticate at best; the holy and secret numbers are easilly captured. Now if the machines allowed me to transfer $5 from my card to yours for free - then I would be impressed.
With mobile phones, the phone company creams off a %, and a call! As there is nothing in it for me, then it stays cash.
I love the smell of hubris in the morning!
Ya fucking racist.
You need a smart card. You can't read the denominations on the bills cuz your head's so far up your ass.
... Japan is not widely known for its high levels of crime. Therefore, such a solution can only be a boon.
Also, Proton cards (Belgium) can only store up to 500. It's an excellent idea - more and more old people here use it.
Language is what makes us different from primitive animals, and bureaucrats.
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
the elephant, a huge tortoise. If we will candidly confess the truth, we
know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
his about the support of the earth. His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
hypotheses are elephants. Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
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