Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

https://aruarian.dance/blog/japan-ic-cards/

by aecsocket • 1 year ago

361 292 1 year ago

PaulHoule2• 1 year ago

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.

aecsocket5• 1 year ago

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.

PaulHoule2• 1 year ago

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.

toxik2• 1 year ago

The departure times dominate latency and throughput in metros. The gates are not the bottleneck.

avianlyric3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

makeitdouble4• 1 year ago

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.

lmm7• 1 year ago

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).

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

Tijdreiziger4• 1 year ago

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

avianlyric3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

That article doesn't say they are.

It will continue to accept national IC cards such as Suica and Icoca

cmcaleer• 1 year ago

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.

0xCMP3• 1 year ago

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.).

tonyhart72• 1 year ago

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???

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

nayuki3• 1 year ago

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!

soruly5• 1 year ago

Yes, I believe so. JR East is now planning to fade-out magnetic tickets by using paper QR Code tickets.

notpushkin10• 1 year ago

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! :)

maxgashkov3• 1 year ago

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!).

toxik2• 1 year ago

I could use my European smartphone (well, smartwatch) as an IC card in Japan. I don't think it was slower.

makeitdouble4• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

It also works on iPhone, with built in wallet support for Suica.

lhl5• 1 year ago

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.

chgs5• 1 year ago

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?

lmm7• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

chgs5• 1 year ago

I don’t see how that’s any different to the underground

walthamstow5• 1 year ago

Felica is virtually instant. Even faster than the original Oyster in London (which contactless card or phone is much slower than)

vachina• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Would printing out the QR code and putting it into your wallet work or is it a changing one?

lmz2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

0xCMP3• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

Android, however, does not support them at all unfortunately (at least on phones not targeted to the Japanese market).

lmm7• 1 year ago

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.

oivey• 1 year ago

At least in Japan, they all work from your phone already.

anArbitraryOne3• 1 year ago

They even work when the phone is off

numpad07• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

OP is talking about QR codes, not EMV open-loop systems.

eloisius2• 1 year ago

I think they are even more useful in Taiwan. Every single transit system across the entire island that I’ve ever encountered accepts EasyCard (悠遊卡). 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.

lhl5• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

decimalenough• 1 year ago

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...

walthamstow5• 1 year ago

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!

danielhep• 1 year ago

You can even use them at international chains like Starbucks, IKEA, and McDonalds.

anArbitraryOne3• 1 year ago

Technically a gate, not a turnstile (which inherently slows traffic)

sriamanan• 1 year ago

the entire island Is it China's influence that Taiwan is not being referred to as a country.

kccqzy2• 1 year ago

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.

yuye2• 1 year ago

They are also fast, like you don’t even have to break your strike while passing the turnstiles to enter the metro.

They are not slow, but it's faster in Japan, still. At least in the Taipei MRT.

The Taoyuan Metro is way worse, though. If you keep walking while going through the gate and the card doesn't scan fast enough, it'll error and tell you to step back outside of the gate area (the in-between part) and scan again. It slows traffic down quite a bit.

lhl5• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

lhl5• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.”

astrange7• 1 year ago

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.)

BlueTemplar2• 1 year ago

(What do you mean ?)

perching_aix2• 1 year ago

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.

GuB-42• 1 year ago

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 café and it will still be there when you get back, in fact, it is a common way of "reserving" a table.

thm• 1 year ago

I found Suica/Pasmo/Icoca to be the golden trinity for most regions.

notpushkin10• 1 year ago

Those are interchangeable – you can (generally) use Suica if a store accepts Icoca and vice versa, etc.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

bamboozled3• 1 year ago

I tried it said ten days to verify, then it failed...because my name was wrong. Gave up.

bamboozled3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

No they aren't weird. It is a very simple system that doesn't try to destroy the customer.

frakkingcylons• 1 year ago

weird (positive)

AshamedCaptain9• 1 year ago

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. München 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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

AshamedCaptain9• 1 year ago

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.

askvictor• 1 year ago

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

soruly5• 1 year ago

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.

phh2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

socalgal26• 1 year ago

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 Châtelet 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.

AshamedCaptain9• 1 year ago

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).

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

AshamedCaptain9• 1 year ago

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.

aikinai3• 1 year ago

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.

AshamedCaptain9• 1 year ago

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.

sejin8642• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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_cheese2• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

coolcase• 1 year ago

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.

bamboozled3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

“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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Is nfc via google/apple wallet faster then?

socalgal26• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

delfinom4• 1 year ago

If you want to root your Pixel to enable it:

https://github.com/kormax/osaifu-keitai-google-pixel

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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).

aecsocket5• 1 year ago

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.

delfinom4• 1 year ago

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)

kormax• 1 year ago

Author of the "Osaifu-Keitai-Google-Pixel" article here.

There's a big chance that Apple does not eat the cost for Osaifu-Keitai actually, as they may have a sweet-heart deal, hinted by an article from watch.impress [1], which I found a very long time ago via Twitter.

So the fee is either waived by FeliCa networks, covered by Japanese Carriers, and (as an educated guess) paid only upon enrollment of the first FeliCa-compatible card to device.

I think it would be naive to believe that Apple, of all companies, would be the one willing to pay a couple of cents per device in order to offer a feature that, at best, only a single digit percentage of their users would use.

[1] https://www.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/series/suzukij/1297656....

numpad07• 1 year ago

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.

RajT882• 1 year ago

Not mentioned is the cards currently in use in Japan, "icoca". A pun on "ikouka" - "shall we go?"

amelius• 1 year ago

As in, "will this train run?"?

RajT882• 1 year ago

Do not think so. That would be a different verb form -rareru

thrance• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

[...] 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• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

aikinai3• 1 year ago

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.

delfinom4• 1 year ago

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.

hocuspocus2• 1 year ago

Note that on global Pixels it isn't hard to enable, either via root or flashing Japanese variants of the factory images.

pauldino• 1 year ago

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

numpad07• 1 year ago

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.

ynx• 1 year ago

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.

lxgr25• 1 year ago

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.

aecsocket5• 1 year ago

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.

rajnathani• 1 year ago

A writing feedback: After you added the "Clarification" update, you could also have put something like "Update (read below)" in the bold part "NFC-F support is not enough to use your phone as an IC card".

Otherwise, thanks for writing this article, it is very insightful, especially the whole parallel NFC standards development process in the early days of the technology by Japanese companies like Sony.

mrb• 1 year ago

"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.

delfinom4• 1 year ago

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.

soruly5• 1 year ago

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 (乗り越し精算) with the help of station staff.

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

mifydev• 1 year ago

Just visiting Japan, just realised that IC cards are super fast compared to London, crazy relevant article!

barnabee• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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!

ksec2• 1 year ago

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.

ksec2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

soruly5• 1 year ago

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).

Marsymars2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

astrange7• 1 year ago

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.

mmooss5• 1 year ago

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.

maxgashkov3• 1 year ago

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.

numpad07• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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-schuetz2• 1 year ago

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.

Arn_Thor• 1 year ago

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)

m4632• 1 year ago

Japan has a fascinating environment. It is very uplifting. Japanese citizens do not seem to participate in crime.

I wondered about this and discussed it with an american friend who lived there for a couple decades and whose kids were born there.

He said that they talk about everything in school. They go through scenarios like stealing, and have long discussions in class. They will discuss what happens, how people feel and what is the outcome. so education.

On the other hand, I commented on the nice society with japanese citizens and they have counterpoints, like "japan is too slow to change" and the like.

AStonesThrow• 1 year ago

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.

soruly5• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

NYC subway tap-to-pay via Apple Pay is also instant. Like, actually, instant (<500ms)

asimops• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Have you ever considered eliminating gates from public transport entirely, as is done in Vienna?

commandersaki• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

abdullahkhalids2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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 ¥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.

abdullahkhalids2• 1 year ago

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.

mmooss5• 1 year ago

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?

Symbiote3• 1 year ago

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.

kccqzy2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

The DC Metro system operates similarly.

hoppp• 1 year ago

How is it compared to the Danish rejsekort? That works kind of similar, its very fast too

Symbiote3• 1 year ago

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.

ZeroNietzsche• 1 year ago

Japan's IC cards ARE weird and wonderful, a reason I have missed Japan (after only living there three months whilst working for my US-based employer) ever since the day I returned to this cesspit over two years ago.

Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

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