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Apple Pay's Express Transit Mode Working in Parts of London Underground
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I can confirm Express Travel is working in Canons Park and Aldgate... Meaning it probably works everywhere now.
This is not compatible with weekly/monthly/yearly passes though.
Again everyone I know and random posts I read indicate this is what is stopping full-time people from always using contactless, it’s more expensive
To be fair, it has happened often enough with me and others with the tickets that TfL dispenses from its machines. I don't think this will eradicate the problem of uncooperative gates completely but it should help.
Literally everything you said “can’t be done” by prepaid cards could be done by prepaid cards, if MasterCard were so inclined to develop one for use on TfL.
Tried Harrow & Wealdstone Station this morning. Had 3 try again fails. Used Face ID 4th attempt and that worked.
Yesterday, I tried it on that very same station and Express Transit worked, however it was touching out/different terminal.
So it's obvious some terminals still don't work. Which is probably why Apple and TfL haven't announced the feature available yet.
Yesterday, I tried it on that very same station and Express Transit worked, however it was touching out/different terminal.
So it's obvious some terminals still don't work. Which is probably why Apple and TfL haven't announced the feature available yet.
So you are a fellow Harrow Borough resident!
You don't have to wait till you're at the turnstile/gate to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID. In fact, it's bad to do it that way because its much slower and wastes time. Pre-authenticate before you approach the gate!
It sounds exactly like the Transit Benefit Cards we get here in the US. These are regular debit cards though in the US but can only be used for transit. Some are contactless and can be tapped at a fare gate that takes EMV taps like ones in New York or Chicago. The card has a MasterCard logo on them.
certainly this is something in the works for TfL if they go the same route. They can still “lock” a MasterCard to certain categories only like transit only.
The card reader has firmware to let the phone know it’s a transit reader not a regular card reader. Express transit at say a Best Buy could be bad.
Used this yesterday in NYC in one of the stations that's part of the trial.
I was skeptical of this at first because I thought you had to authenticate like you do with regular Apple Pay and it would slow down turnstiles. It is slightly slower than using a MetroCard -- there's a bit of a pause as you hold your phone up to the sensor and it registers. MetroCard is one incredibly fast movement once you're a regular user. But, you have to assume that in the final incarnation the sensor for your phone would be in a sensible place instead of awkwardly low where it is in this trial.
Anyway, I'm pretty much won over. It's quick enough, and I got 2% back because of the Apple Card. I hope they expand it soon.
I was skeptical of this at first because I thought you had to authenticate like you do with regular Apple Pay and it would slow down turnstiles. It is slightly slower than using a MetroCard -- there's a bit of a pause as you hold your phone up to the sensor and it registers. MetroCard is one incredibly fast movement once you're a regular user. But, you have to assume that in the final incarnation the sensor for your phone would be in a sensible place instead of awkwardly low where it is in this trial.
Anyway, I'm pretty much won over. It's quick enough, and I got 2% back because of the Apple Card. I hope they expand it soon.
i had the opposite experience tbh.
i literally walked up to the OMNY reader, held my watch up next to it and walked through (i currently have my Apple Card as the default express transit card). no double tapping the side button. i didnt use my phone so no need to authenticate or hold it up correctly. i literally just lifted my hand up by the reader and it glowed green and i was through...
much better than Metrocards where I have to swipe... then swipe again... then swipe again at the same turnstile.
Well, to be fair it sounds like you're having an unusual amount of difficulty using the Metrocard. Swiping and swiping again is not at all the normal experience unless you've got a damaged card, a defective turnstile, or you're going too fast or too slowly. If you take a look at people flowing through the turnstiles, it's one fluid motion 99% of the time. I've had the odd problematic card or reader over the 20+ years I've been in NYC, but generally it's just incredibly fast.
Like I said, the OMNY reader is decently quick, but there's a slight lag before it beeps. Maybe they'll speed up the technology as they go -- and putting the reader in a more natural place higher on the turnstile would help too.
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I had this same reservation, especially in the insanely busy NYC subway. I was ready to hate this too, and truly if we had people unlocking their phones to get into the system, it would gum things up horribly as you say.
BUT, as it turns out you don't have to authenticate at all. Once you've set a card in Apple Pay for "express transit" then all you have to do is hold the device up to the reader and the payment goes through without any further intervention from the user. Again, no FaceID, no TouchID, no unlocking your phone at all.
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But that's exactly my point. Where is TfL's pre-paid debit card for the unemployed, retired, season card holders, etc... oh look, it's nowhere to be seen, and AFAICS will never be done. And the private sector have no imperative to suddenly do one just for this purpose either (unless TfL magically gave them an impetus to; super unlikely!).
Thus we're back to the need for a digital Oyster card solution again, for these groups of users.
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Yeah but would TfL ever offer one, directly or indirectly? I can't see it, as they've literally done nothing to solve for the issue in all these years so far.
As someone who lives in a city where you need to authenticate, it isn’t always that easy.
Yes, you can do it ahead of time the majority of the time, but 30% of the time you:
- Just barely catch the bus, or;
- Are in a hurry, or;
- Are having a conversation and get distracted, or;
- Are carrying too much and get tripped up, or;
- You do authenticate if ahead of time but accidentally bump the sleep button.
In these cases, I’ve seen the false negative % I get from Face ID is MUCH higher than other times (probably because I’m rushing and can’t look down at the correct time and/or my face is obstructed).
Don’t get me wrong, it’s still better than carrying a separate transit card, but after using my iPhone for SUICA in Japan, it’s like night and day with how fast, flawless, and easy it is. Having to authenticate is needlessly cumbersome.
Let me help clarify a few things as someone who has lived in the three major metros in Japan as well as Taipei, Singapore and Seoul-- in addition to growing up with NYC's Metrocard after the switchover from metal tokens (!)
-- Japan has one of the highest usage rates of bankcards both pre and postpaid in the world, to the point where there is a whole division of Ministry of Finance dedicated to "Cashless payment instruments." (It's one of the reasons why the uptake and legal regulation of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Etherium is so easily done and why most businesses in this space have offices here.)
--People use electronic payments all the time and to say otherwise is pure baloney! There hasn't been a such thing as paper checks in forever because even grandma pays the rent with a bank to bank transfer. More people are comfortable with e-payments than their American counterparts in my experience. It's just that how its done is a little bit different than what the West has grown accustomed to. The smartphone has taken over the PC and ATM machine's role at being the physical point where these transactions are initiated now, but the uptake of banking, finance, and e-pay apps are 30x faster than what has been seen in the US because of it.
--Also blame SMBs for not TAKING e-payments, rather than the average person simply avoiding it. Did you know that McDonald's and most other fast and casual food restaurants didn't take credit cards until 3 years ago? Did you know that they now accept just about every form of card/contactless/QR code scheme now though?
--The chicken vs egg stalemate was broken in part due to the introduction of Suica/Pasmo in Tokyo in 2004 followed by other major metro areas having their own transit IC cards, and then the grand reciprocity linking program in 2013 that means these cards will work throughout Japan no matter where the originating agency is located. While its true that one needs a card from that originating agency to make a *commuter pass*, you can still make a pass that spans several agencies; my own pass starts on JR (Suica) and ends on Odakyu (Pasmo) for example. Everyone knows this and it's not a big deal.
--EMV's major pain points of being transactionally SLOW AS HELL, needing an active network connection to verify details with some validation server somewhere at the very least, and having misreads if the card/device doesn't hover around the sensor for about a second or two would never cut it during rush hour at my local station in the western Tokyo suburbs, let alone someplace like Shinjuku or Shinagawa station! I barely need to have my watch or phone above the target quicker than I am speed walking through the gate and I get that vibration that it was read before the display can even light up and show me what happened! Be that one person at any of the stations I just mentioned that pulled out the wrong card or didn't recharge/unlock/top-up their device and has the gate close on you (Because they stay open by default, another thing that makes fare payment quicker here)... The icy stares tapping you in the back of your head from the folks behind you will make you feel smaller than a field mouse! EMV (and the Japan-only ID and QuikPay variants) aren't designed to be used in this manner.
--In the event of a power outage or simply being out of mobile coverage doesn't stop Felica based transactions from being able to be validated by on board equipment, whereas EMV based cards will always need "outside" validation for their transactions because of the methods the actual network and transaction communications use. Unless Visa or MasterCard develop some sort of similar trustless token based transaction scheme that says "This card is good for at least 1000 yen locally, but anything beyond will need a network to verify", this problem will exist and add to the communications overhead.
--As a father whose kids regularly need to ride the train and get to their activities alone here, it's far easier to just give them pocket money by recharging their Pasmo cards than to give them a prepaid debit card or even cash since I know they keep up with the transit card (worn around neck or attached to backpack usually), is secure (has their name and registered with my information so I can check balances and can suspend/cancel/reissue just like a credit card), and is accepted payment in more places (a few places won't take Visa/MC but will take Transit IC because it's as good as cash and has an infinitesimally small fee--and is carried by generally everyone here)
--Finally, it is dead simple to keep a mobile Suica recharged through Apple Pay by just using a registered debit or credit card to top it up! My bank (Mizuho) even has an app that creates a virtual Suica tied to my account that makes it that much easier to do. And because there's an entire ecosystem here that takes Suica/Transit IC cards as payment, I pay for groceries, gasoline for my car, movie and even airline tickets with it in addition to riding the train. JR-East built a whole system outside the banks and it works. There are also other strictly e-money cards like Edy, Nanaco, Waon, T-Point, and more too-- and all of these schemes have ways to tie into your bank account or have co-branded credit cards where recharging is easy.
The other poster was trying to tell you the "Japan invented solution" is older than EMV and Apple Pay itself so of course it would be hard to change to some other solution-- but moreover, why should Japan change to something inferior? I agree we should do it here in some sort of fashion, if only to accommodate the increased amounts of tourists, but only dedicate a few gates at each station for that in the same way as there are only a few gates that take paper tickets, but all of them take IC cards now. Let me tap in and out with no fuss and give these folks their own lane.
Oyster is the private sector. There may be a “need” but it’s not necessarily more likely to happen
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2014/july/tfl-and-cubic-continue-partnership
^^^This.
It takes a while to get into the habit, but once you adopt it, it's smooth as silk. I don't use an Apple Watch, but getting my phone out and side-double-click->FaceID->tap->replace phone whilst continuing to walk is so much less faff than the remove wallet->take Oyster Card out of wallet->tap->replace Oyster Card->replace wallet routine. Taking the side-double-click->FaceID steps out will be even better.
What does that have to do with anything? Cubic Transportation and Scheidt & Bachmann does pretty much every single transit system in the US too, and we have the specialized cards. The same fare gates are used in SF and they have benefit cards. It CAN be done.
Basically all your assertions are disproven by the fact that the Japanese government introduced a 5% rebate stimulus, to promote cashless payments in advance of the 2020 Olympics, spending ¥279.8 billion.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Japan-shoppers-ditch-cash-and-embrace-e-money-for-tax-breaks
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/09/01/business/tax-rebate-small-retailers-cashless-payments
As I said, the Japanese actually have almost exactly the same amount of credit cards per capita as the US. However, cashless payments are about 60-70% of all transactions by count in the US. As the article says, it's 20% in Japan, with a government goal of 40% by 2025.
"Highest usage rates of bankcards" is definitely false, especially when compared to South Korea at 90+%.
Incorrect. Visa/Mastercard rules allow offline use for transit applications. Ever use a credit card on a plane? Ever buy a ticket or food on a train in Britain?
In the event of an outage, all systems allow offline fallback, with the merchant bearing the risk. Stored-value systems like Felica require daily synchronization for accounting reconciliation and fraud detection, so in the widespread disaster case, stored-value is not an answer.
Contactless is a variant on EMV referred to as "open loop" that does not require the card to still be there when server authorization takes place. This was moved over to traditional contact use as a result of complaints of long transaction times.
Indeed, there always has been a limit called the "floor limit" which underneath that value, no authorization is necessary. This is a per-merchant/industry and per-country value, so no new scheme is necessary like you proposed.
All of this goes right back to the current use of contactless in transit, such as in London, which can do a tap-in in under 500 ms.
You know Japanese still order things online COD so they can avoid paying online? Amazon, as with other retailers, supports COD in Japan, putting it in the same category as countries with less-developed banking like India.
Similarly, people do pay bills in cash at c-stores. In the US, this is only for very poor people. In fact lower income people tend to use autopay more, it's wealthy people who need to do financial management, like moving cash from investments, so they use manual payments.
Ignoring the fact that stored-value systems require much more accounting, are less secure, and aren't scalable since things like invalid card lists and recharge lists have to be uploaded to terminals daily, so are arguably inferior, the reason is the same reason the US had to change to the flawed EMV standard... international use. Both for visitors, and also because the infrastructure and equipment is shared.
If you don't understand that, you don't see why Japan fell behind in technology, again it's well known as the Galápagos syndrome.
In all, that's a very typical western foreigner view of Japan. You see them doing things differently and they like to advertise as such, but when you dig down deep, look at hard facts, and compare Japan to its neighbors, Japan is a isolated culture that is highly resistant to modern change and insists on clinging to behaviors that came from the immediate postwar period.
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No, you missed something. TfL writes the specs and Cubic does it. Chicago's Ventra is a similar PPP by the exact same vendor Cubic and they do support passes on contactless as well as prepaid cards. It sounds like you're giving the common British complaint that if something is broken it's solely due to privatization.
You have also missed a step because what I was arguing was the chance of Cubic creating a digital version of the Oyster card is basically nil, since the contract already exists and they’re getting paid. Private companies don’t tend to over-invest in infrastructure for zero return. They have no impetus to make oyster digital, especially since MasterCard has long since done the work for EMV to work alongside oyster
the point was that tfl won’t develop a digital Oyster card, because they don’t operate the system in the first place. It’s done on their behalf, and a contract for that is in place already.
what’s more likely - and I said this in an earlier post - is making the system work like the one you’re talking about. But that’s not a digital version of a transit card put into Apple Pay to satisfy the needs of a minority. That’s a system built to satisfy all, using EMV as its basis. It’s completely different.
Nope. The impetus to make a digital version, or digital equivalent like passes on contactless, is the cost of making and distributing physical Oyster cards. TfL says that contactless is cheaper for them than Oyster, I gave the link above. Plus you have environmental mandates from government, somebody just needs to point out that x tons of CO2e are produced by Oyster cards per year.
If TfL is shouldering these costs, then TfL is going to demand a cardless solution. If Cubic's contract has them shouldering the cost, then they will implement a cardless solution.