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Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

aruarian.dance

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Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#191

Post by lxgr »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #156
lxgr wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The problem is definitely exacerbated by human behavior. There are almost always multiple turnstiles, but I've seen groups of people managing to block all of them simultaneously, figuring out how to use them...

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#192

Post by lxgr »

ValentineC wrote: post #178
lxgr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Pay uses hardware secure elements, so the same limitations largely apply. Google Pay emulates the card on the application processor, so theoretically it could be faster, but I wouldn't be surprised if anything won in terms of more performant RSA cryptography is lost to higher command processing latency between the NFC interface and application processor. It would be interesting for somebody to do a latency comp…

Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to their cloud? Google Pay only allows a certain number of offline transactions (around three or so, I think) before I'm required to turn off airplane mode and authenticate with their servers. I believe this also allows it to work with more phones, and get around security and possibly also regulatory requirements, since there's less need for a really secure secure enc…

> Doesn't Google Pay offload some of the processing to their cloud?

Not on a per transaction basis, or you couldn't make any offline payments (i.e. with your phone being offline; the terminal can usually not be offline for Apple or Google Pay in the way that it can for cards). Latency would probably also be too high/variable.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#193

Post by numpad0 »

lozenge wrote: post #121
cmcaleer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

I thought contactless is considered too slow? The exit gates are often open and only close when somebody attempts to pass without their IC card/insufficient balance on the IC card, how does this work with contactless? I feel like they could combine the IC and contactless reader into one bit of hardware with some engineering.

They've gotten NFC VISA payWave at least comparably fast as FeliCa by skipping a few checks. It's still not as fast as genuine Suica - look how hard these men force their own fist to stay on the reader like their pay depends on it[1], but Suica advantages are slowly becoming a tougher sell with population and economy going a long way down.

1: A 2021 VISA touch-to-ride demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=To5S615UQtU

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#194

Post by numpad0 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #68

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,…

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.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#195

Post by numpad0 »

toxik wrote: post #7
aecsocket wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

ref: https://twitter.com/sigeyosiinoue/status/891206258488885248

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#196

Post by supertrope »

aidenn0 wrote: post #171
pauldino wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do wonder who it is that has all of these android phones in the US (nearly 40% by the statistics). In my extended friend group only one person other than me uses an Android phone.

People who can't afford to spend $599 on a phone. Or those who can afford it but can send picture messages all the same on a phone that costs hundreds less.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#197

Post by astrange »

suddenexample wrote: post #185
lorenzotenti wrote: post #160

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.

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.

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.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#198

Post by numpad0 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #100
Washuu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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.

try these[1], they go between cards and prevent the one behind it from being read.

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%94%B9%E6%9C%AD%E3%82%A8%...

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#199

Post by lxgr »

ynx wrote: post #129
aikinai wrote: post #88

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.

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.

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.

Re: Japan's IC cards are weird and wonderful

#200

Post by movedx »

lorenzotenti wrote: post #160

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.

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.

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