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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 ... "
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...
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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
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.
Does this mean that if you get stuck in a revolving door, you go broke quick?
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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)
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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."
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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.
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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 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!!
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.... 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.
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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.
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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.
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.