Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kalleboo | Hacker News Reader

Wow this discussion unlocked a long-lost memory: the Swedish "cash card" - a stored value card where you'd use a terminal to load money off your bank account onto the stored value card and then use it in participating stores. If you lost the card you lost the money. The fees to merchants were too high so it never gained any adoption, it looks like it only was available from 1997-2004. The Wikipedia references a German version, Geldkarte, which apparently had a renaissance when it could double as proof of age for tobacco vending machines...

https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_(betalsystem)

I'm also reminded of the magstripe stored value cards used by our public transit agency. These were trivial to rewrite, but since most people who tried this did it to save money on their commute rather than random joyriding, it was easy for the agency to reconcile the usage logs to find out where they went every day and wait for them at their station...

These days I think the main advantage to offline systems is performance. When you have a busy subway station in Tokyo with massive crowds passing through the gates, nothing beats the throughout of offline Felicia Suica cards. Their gates default to open and you walk through while swiping without stopping, the gates only close if there is a failure. Vs EMV-based systems like London where you have to stop and wait for the card reader

As others have said, EMV doesn't have to phone home, and London's TfL system often doesn't straight away because they might not even have a connection (my bus this morning definitely didn't). It's also not charging the payment immediately, because the charge is unknown at that point - you might not know until the end of the day or week what the charge is, because travel rates are capped and dependent on the zones you're traveling in.

As to the gates being default closed, well, gates at train/tube stations can accept a range of things being presented to them including smartphone/watch payments, bank card contactless, Oyster card, Oyster season tickets, paper tickets with magnetic stripes, paper/magnetic season tickets, and Freedom passes (technically a special sort of Oyster season ticket, I think).

If you're traveling with a paper/magnetic ticket, you're going to have to insert it into the mag reader and wait for it to spit it out before it opens the gates. Can't be swiped.

That, combined with the fact TfL already have a problem with revenue protection (some people jump gates), albeit not quite as bad as you'll see in most of Paris or Rome, means they're going to keep the gates closed by default.

Fare dodging in Tokyo is almost unthinkable. Social constructs mean they can do something at those gates few other cities of that size can get away with.

Interesting. So there's no verification of the card validity at all? I assumed at least they took an auth hold like gas stations do. If I call and get my card blocked I can use that now-invalid card and ride for free?

So why then are the EMV card readers so damn slow? Is it just a NFC vs FeliCa thing?

The Tokyo metro system also supports paper (mag stripe) tickets through the same fare gates. Those are also spit through the gate super fast.

On a failed read, the gates close nearly-instantly, I don't think they would actually aid in fare avoidance, you do see people run into them painfully when their card has too low balance.

From personal experience, if you use an EMV card that has been blocked on TfL services, you will sometimes be able to travel. I did this by accident once. I could see TfL repeatedly trying to debit my account with incorrect information for about a week. I doubt all of their readers are offline, and I suspect that a card gets blacklisted if it declines. I suspect this is also because they only charge at the end of the day once they have computed the correct fare (with capping etc)

Interesting anecdote! Thanks. I would have definitely assumed that at least train gates (but not buses I guess) would attempt a hold!

> On a failed read, the gates close nearly-instantly, I don't think they would actually aid in fare avoidance, you do see people run into them painfully when their card has too low balance.

I'm talking about the instance where somebody doesn't even scan: they just walk through. That is possible in some stations in London, and it's perhaps not a coincidence that's where the worst fare avoidance occurs.

No, the Japanese fare gates have motion detectors. If you try to walk through without scanning, the gates close. I tested this once.

They don't close all the way, though, and it's easy to go through. But there's usually someone who would notice and stop you.

> Vs EMV-based systems like London where you have to stop and wait for the card reader

Throughput depends on the people being ready.

In London the TfL gates (both train/underground) have a delay on closing, so it's possible for the next person's pass (whatever it is) to be scanned before the gates close. At busy times there are enough people already ready with their passes that the gates don't shut at all between scans and there is steady flow of people passing through. It only fails when someone faffs a bit too long with their pass/phone/watch/etc and you get a temporary stall.

Even approaching a closed gate it's possible, with a bit of practice and an outstretched arm, to walk through without having to break stride.

You do have to be careful of some people intentionally using an invalid card, resulting in the gates closing, and the person behind them letting them through with their subsequent scan whilst being left at the gate themselves (easily solved by then going to see one of the gate operatives and explaining the situation).

The things that aren't quite there yet, in terms of speed, are the QR codes being used for digital rail tickets, they have a separate optical reader (obviously) that doesn't work quickly/easily enough to walk through without breaking stride as you have to faff with a piece of paper or your phone rather than a simple NFC.

The wonderfull Cash-chip was embedded into Visa debit card issued by the bank. It also had "Valid in Sweden only" printed beside it, on an othervise internationally recognized debit-card.

I know of at least one person who had to spend the night in a detainment cell at JFK and then had to take a plane back to Sweden the next morning because the customs agent concluded that they didn't have any money for their stay in New York.

Oh god that sounds like an unfortunate design haha

Germany: Geldkarte (German: "money card") is a stored-value card or electronic cash system used in Germany. It operates as an offline smart card for small payment at things like vending machines and to pay for public transport or parking tickets. The card is pre-paid and funds are loaded onto the card using ATMs or dedicated charging machines. The system will be abandoned from 2024.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geldkarte

The similar Austrian system was called 'Quick' and has been defunct for a few years now. I only ever used it for vending machines, mostly cigarettes https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_(Geldkarte)

London does not charge online, especially as they don’t know the fare until later, so the billing still happens as batch like Oyster.

EMV based systems aren’t necessarily authentification based / don’t always phone home depending on the card issuer.

It depends on both issuer, acquirer and the particular merchant. Second step of the EMV transaction (after the terminal verifies that the card was issued by known issuer) involves the card and terminal comparing their authentication and authorization policies, which might very well result in no-op being acceptable to both. The system is not designed to be secure against fraud, but to assign liability for the fraud to particular party in cryptographically verifiable way. So as a merchant (think public transport) you can very well accept cards offline without any kind of CHV step, but the possible fraud is your problem.

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