231–240 of 276 posts
i imagine not being reliant on american payment networks for your nation's retail economy has lit a fire under their asses.
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You can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.
All iPhones can.
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Pixel phones bought outside Japan supposedly can if you do a little adb hacking to enable it, but I don't have a Pixel to try it myself.
Pixel phones outside of Japan are missing the Felica chip. Apple pays the fee for all phones in the world to have the chip. Google only pays for Japan devices.
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Same deal with Opal in Sydney - the old school opal card processes a second or so faster than a card/apple pay/google pay that you can just keep walking. Smashed into the barrier the one time I forgot my card.
Something that is amazing about Sydney’s system though is that as a visitor to Sydney you can likely use the train system without needing an app or any sign up. Just use your credit or debit card via nfc on your phone (or the physical one) I was honestly so impressed by that, you mean I can just tap on? Don’t need to stand here outside the gates for 10 minutes entering my info into a frustrating app? Don’t need to bu…
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The card might be fast but getting one as a tourist is kind of a hassle
I heard from friends that physical Suica cards tend to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't at all. Took me roughly a minute to create one within Apple Wallet ahead of my trip, and that was it. Didn't need to install any apps or register on any websites, because creating a Suica card is natively supported in the wallet app. Idk how the situation is like with Suica card on Android though,…
If you haven’t experienced suica, it’s like magically fast. Faster than NFC, faster than Apple Pay, faster than tap to pay, faster than Disney magic bands, faster than your work badge. It absolutely floored me every time I used it in Japan and it’s a full payment transaction.
Credit to the Suica folk and Apple folk for making it seamless.
As for the speed.. idk I think it's about as quick as the Oyster card. Phone payments have a bunch of extra latency on TfL too.
Maybe it was advanced for the time being created, to me it's just any other RFID card that is issued everywhere else in the world in the matter of read speed, from every public transit card that I find in every EU country I've visited (maybe for a US citizen not used to public transit it seems something special, I don't know), to skipasses, to even your gym card. Having the option to also pay with credit card would b…
There is a perhaps a trend of local payment means being less accessible to tourists. I haven't experienced it first hand but WeChat/Alipay are in the same boat as I understand, and PromptPay in Indonesia can be somewhat be used but needs preparation before making the trip. Now, if you're not a tourist passing by for 3 days, Suica has most of your gripes solved and is an incredibly useful general payment mean. I use t…
It's because you want to price differentiate tourists and local people. Tourists will pay more for travel than your electorate.
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The card definitely stores the balance. They probably sync the transaction records to their servers, but during the transaction the value on the card is presumed to be the truth AFAICT. Remember when the system was designed in the early 2000s the Internet was much less available and reliable, and when so many transactions happen every day, you don't want to get thousands of passengers stuck inside a metro station onl…
Credit card payments have an "offline" mode for the same reason - before ubiquitous broadband, a shop may have to dial-up to the bank to verify a card, which is slow. Debit cards that run on the credit networks can have that enabled or disabled depending on trust. Remember originally credit card payments worked by putting the card under a slip of carbon-copy paper and rubbing off the raised digits. All the digital st…
But yeah, even settling up at the end of the day with those terminals is still way faster than settling up carbon copies via mail.