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Three Universities in U.S. Launch Contactless Student ID Cards on iPhone and Apple Watch
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Yeah this so far is Blackboard Transact campuses. Though I totally am going to poke the CBORD powers that be when I'm at their annual user group conference next week. I'm with you on thinking that Auburn is a CBORD campus.
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Well first of all your school needs to be using Blackboard Transact and second the backend stuff will be at least sorta like your bank with Apple Pay.
Fumbling repeatedly? You might be surprised to learn that most university students aren’t 70 years of age with cataracts and carpal-tunnel. I use Apple Pay every day, even on the tube, and never fumbled once. I find it far more convenient than digging through my wallet to extract the appropriate card. And my cards don’t even support Express Mode - the mode you would have known about had you bothered to read the article before commenting.
That won’t happen. Our university abandoned Blackboards LMS a few years ago. What if a school just wants to use smart devices to control room access without giving another company access to said information?
It is express card.
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I saw the following quote on article from a campus card trade pubilication: "Blackboard reports significant interest from campuses nationwide. “We announced the initial six campuses in the summer, but interest is already very high and we’re expecting strong adoption and implementation beyond this group in 2019,” Staples says."
So it's possible if your school is using Blackboard Transact they may have already gotten in line.
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Sorry I missed your reply, though remember this is Blackboard's card services not classroom services and I don't think Apple or Blackboard sees anything from the university.
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Ok. So here is the $64k question: if you have NFC chips in IDs for room access, meal plans and “campus-branded cash”/Visa cards already why would a university pay money to add this? What does this platform do that any financially sensitive institution would even look at?
None here that I know of. If there were I’d just go somewhere else.
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If they use BlackBoard Transact already I’m sure the cost of this is nothing to nominal.
Makes sense for Phoenix (if that's where you are)
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How many cards do you carry? You know you don't have to carry your life in your wallet right?
This sounds incredibly convenient, and I wonder how long it’ll be till we can get this kind of technology on our front door? I have always wanted a smart lock but would love the convenience of just being able to tap my watch to the door instead of fumbling with Siri/HomeKit/ separate app
Yep, Phoenix. Our buses and trains also came out with a new app that allows you to buy a day pass inside of an app- that accepts Apple Pay. One less reason to need cash (though you never needed it prior to the app if you bought your pass at a train station/transit center/a store beforehand)
The new parking meters also take cards/Apple Pay.
Any chance you could record yourself doing this? I'd love to see it in action but can only find still images of people's IDs :/
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hi friednoodles.
great post. appreciate it.
i think you are right that the functionality for these cards is not based on Felica.
i wonder about the japanese suica card "stored value card" mention, though.
i think that felica has a much shorter time standard permitted for the transaction to be completed (so that it can be able to keep up with millisecond transportation turnstile requirements).
so i think that it is a not a stored value card in that sense. the transaction is in fact done in real time on the network server, not locally.
there is actually an issue now in Japan where many iPhone X users have where about 20% of their transit usage attempts is failing (but now fixed in iPhone Xs) due to time lag problems.
i have a question for you:
on the USA spec site for iPhone Xs, there is no explicit mention of felica in the specs.
you are right in yr post that earlier iPhone models, even if purchased in the USA, had felica capability.
on the Japan spec site for iPhone Xs it does mention mention felica in the spec specifically )along with NFC and Reader mode (Express Card).
i wonder why the USA site has stopped explicitly specifying felica in the specs of these new iPhone models.
thanks.
It's nothing terribly exciting to watch...you just hold the device up to a reader and it scans automatically with Express Mode enabled. I'll try to get a video later though.
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Update: Here you go. Apologies for the sketchy/vertical video.
Hi niji,
The "stored value" has several parts - some of it is in the card ("offline"), some of it is in the central network ("online"). The card does store its balance, including other data like the most recent 20 transactions. This can be read directly from the card offline, which facilitates instant transaction completion. The terminal then contacts the central network online to record the transaction, allowing a registered card's balance to be recovered if a card is lost. But this happens after the transaction has already been completed on the card offline. (Suica cards supporting auto top-up, like VIEW, is a special case - the top-up process occurs at the terminal in "online" mode when it detects the card balance is low)
You can read the stored value data directly off the card yourself, including the 20 most recent transactions, using special NFC readers or with Android apps like Suikakeibo.
All of this is different to credit card, where the card never knows its balance and the success or failure of the transaction can only be determined by contacting the card's issuing bank first.
Additionally, as you mention, FeliCa/NFC-F specifications are superior for transit: much faster communications completion with the card (50ms), a much lower maximum time for transaction completion (200ms, and usually it's lower), and much longer reading distance (85mm as a minimum). NFC-A/B is instead about 500ms for communications completion, transaction completion may be several seconds due to contacting the issuing bank, and the reading distance is much shorter (20mm as a minimum).
The problem you mention regarding the iPhone X with Suica is not necessarily because of the fast transaction speed, but because of a hardware fault with some iPhone X's manufactured before April 2018 that causes communication failure between the terminal and the iPhone X (it is more likely to happen in the frequent and fast environment of transit use in Japan, but also affects users of NFC-A/B outside Japan too). You can get your iPhone X replaced with an iPhone X manufactured after April 2018 to solve the problem. See https://atadistance.net/2018/08/26/iphone-x-suica-mondai-exchange-guide-jp/ on how to do this. (yes, it's annoying that Apple of course will not publicly acknowledge the faults in pre-April 2018 units)
Regarding Apple mentioning FeliCa on the Japan specs page but not on the USA specs page: it is just differences in advertising for the market. Outside Japan, Apple wants to promote payments on iPhone as the "Apple Pay" brand only, but in Japan people want to know if a phone supports FeliCa and will look for it in the specs, so they have to list it there. This is not something that was just changed for the iPhone XS, as in many countries (like Australia, where NFC payments are widespread) the iPhone 8 and iPhone X never mentioned anything except "Apple Pay" even though those models support FeliCa. It's just because Apple wants to promote the "Apple Pay" brand and name as a priority.
That’s odd given Apple Pay didn’t launch until 2015, plus I believe chip and pin is relatively new in the U.S.
I don’t think you’ve had contactless cards long either as your banking systems didn’t support the EMV standards.
We had Contactless cards way before EMV, it was called MSD Contactless. Before Chip & PIN, debit cards had Swipe & PIN, like Australia. My Wells Fargo debut since 2008 had Contactless and no chip.
Sure we have EMV now, and it’s all & mostly upgraded to EMV Contactless to facilitate Apple Pay & chip cards.
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Regular ID cards have no authentication either. The authentication is you having and carrying it. They can always deactivate the virtual card like they do the plastic ones on the back end.
Am I the only one who doesn’t use his Apple Watch to pay for things? I’ve always found the ‘double press and hold your wrist here for a while, hoping it works’ motion to be awkward on my Series 3. Maybe when I upgrade my iPhone 7 Plus and no longer have Touch ID, it will change. I just find pulling out my phone with my finger on the sensor less awkward. *shrug*
True, but it's still a good question to ask, and one way in which they could make it more secure for university students.
Hey JL! No, home-grown. We asked HID at the time we were looking to invest and they said they had nothing planned, so we developed Presence. Then they came out with their solution a few months later, but we're honestly not too sad that we went our own path because HID's solution has a number of drawbacks compared to ours - both in features as well as manageability.
