4 ms·

Mifare is what’s been used in London’s Oyster cards for 20 years (not the ultralight ones mind), and Hong Kong for even longer. However oyster really is in its

by chgs 2y ago

Mifare is what’s been used in London’s Oyster cards for 20 years (not the ultralight ones mind), and Hong Kong for even longer. However oyster really is in its way out for most uses. contactless and especially a phone is far more convenient for non season use, and far less wasteful.

akpa1 2y ago
I'm looking forwards to the day they somehow manage to link a National Railcard to a contactless bank card.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  I feel like the approach will probably be that railcards become digital wallet compatible.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    costco already has this for ID cards in the states (and I've also seen it for account ID for home depot and some other places where it's tied to discounts). the app will pull up an ID card with a QR code that changes every 60 seconds or so to prevent screenshotting and trivial reuse, which is analogous to the function the chip performs in terms of challenge-authentication.
- emmet 2y ago
  I'll have aged out before they ever manage this. Been on the to-do list for years.
- chgs 2y ago
  You’d have to have a national railcard first. The only railcards that exist are specific ones for specific groups.
  - akpa1 2y ago
    National Railcard is the name that TfL uses to refer to all of those different types of card. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel/national-railcard-discount https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel/national...
randunel 2y ago
There's a noticeable delay between contactless cards and oysters. Some people I know prefer oyster cards simply because they open the gates faster, in spite of having to top them off all the time. I'm looking forward to not having to choose one trade-off over the other.
- Reason077 2y ago
  It’s noticeable if you’re used to the instant response of Oyster, but we’re talking about a few hundred extra milliseconds. Not something that bothers you once you’re accustomed to it. It’s still fast enough that it will read my Apple Watch before the gate starts to close from the passenger in front of me. One saved trip to an Oyster top-up machine will make up for a lifetime of contactless NFC latency!
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet? The Japanese transit cards that are supported by Apple Pay have that option, and it's arguably the best of both worlds.
    - Reason077 2y ago
      > ”Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet?” It is, there’s even an auto top-up option that adds credit automatically if your balance drops below a certain level. But there’s no “digital” Oyster card, only physical ones. If you want to use a device to pay you have to use contactless. And either way, it’s still kind of a pain to have to maintain a balance - especially if you’re a tourist or visitor and don’t know exactly how much credit you’re going to need. I agree that being able to load a transit card into Apple Pay etc is also a good solution. The convenience of not having a physical card that can be easily lost or forgotten is probably the biggest benefit for me.
      - lxgr 2y ago
mardifoufs 2y ago
I think there are plans for contactless smartphone tickets in Montreal too. I wonder why they haven't done that yet, it's been years since they've started talking about it.
lxgr 2y ago
Hong Kong's Octopus card uses Felica, as far as I know. It's conceptually very similar to MIFARE – a fixed function IC implementing a fully offline stored value purse – but uses a stack that differs from ISO 14443 A on pretty much all layers. (It was planned to possibly become ISO 14443 C, but that never happened.)
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >Hong Kong's Octopus card uses Felica, as far as I know. Yes: Felica was developed by Sony in Japan, but was actually first adopted in Hong Kong, then later in Japan. It's far better than other standards, because it's so fast.
ghaff 2y ago
I used up the balance of my Oyster card last time I was in London and just started using my credit card. If there's a difference I didn't notice.
landedgentry 2y ago
Hong Kong's Octopus card uses the FeliCa standard, not MIFARE.
grishka 2y ago
Isn't Mifare in different forms a de-facto standard for NFC subway tickets around the world? St Petersburg uses Mifare Classic (and tokens), Moscow also uses Mifare Classic for the refillable Troika card and Mifare Ultralight for disposable ones, Dubai "nol" card is a Mifare Desfire, Los Angeles "tap" card is a Mifare Classic, and, yes, the London Oyster is a Mifare Desfire EV1. Yes I actually went through my stack of transit cards and scanned those of them that I wasn't sure about. The only ones that I came across that are not Mifare, and not even readable by Android (but readable by the Flipper Zero), are the paper tickets used in Brussels. Then, of course, there are non-NFC tickets. For example those that use magnetic stripes, like the cute tiny ones in Paris or NYC's MetroCard.
- ascorbic 2y ago
  Japan uses FeliCa for its integrated transport cards (I just read an Osaka Metro ICOCA card with NFC Tools to check). This is used by quite a few systems around the world, including Hong Kong's Octopus.
- grishka 2y ago
  Update: some of those that I labeled as Mifare Classic are actually Mifare Plus, it's just that the app I'm using didn't distinguish them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- account42 2y ago
  That's a lot more MIFARE Classic than I would have expected considering that reader support for those is a lot less guaranteed these days. I guess a lot of them might be legacy systems.
- ralferoo 2y ago
  > the London Oyster is a Mifare Desfire EV1 There are two distinct types of Oyster card, but I don't know which is which, other than from a user perspective. All I know is that I had an old style one (the one without the white D in a blue square on the back) and you could still use it, you just couldn't "connect it" to the app so you couldn't look up your travel history. There was a complicated process for returning it and getting a replacement, but as they'd already phased in paying by bank card by then, and the only advantage of an oyster card was for season tickets, I just returned it and got my deposit back. But if you're into collecting different card types, you might want to try to get hold of one of these old ones as well. They're probably somewhat rare now, as they were encouraging people to upgrade to the new ones at least 5 years ago.

by chgs 2y ago

akpa1 2y ago

I'm looking forwards to the day they somehow manage to link a National Railcard to a contactless bank card.

bobthepanda 2y ago
I feel like the approach will probably be that railcards become digital wallet compatible.
- paulmd 2y ago
  costco already has this for ID cards in the states (and I've also seen it for account ID for home depot and some other places where it's tied to discounts). the app will pull up an ID card with a QR code that changes every 60 seconds or so to prevent screenshotting and trivial reuse, which is analogous to the function the chip performs in terms of challenge-authentication.
emmet 2y ago
I'll have aged out before they ever manage this. Been on the to-do list for years.
chgs 2y ago
You’d have to have a national railcard first. The only railcards that exist are specific ones for specific groups.
- akpa1 2y ago
  National Railcard is the name that TfL uses to refer to all of those different types of card. https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel/national-railcard-discount https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel/national...

randunel 2y ago

There's a noticeable delay between contactless cards and oysters. Some people I know prefer oyster cards simply because they open the gates faster, in spite of having to top them off all the time. I'm looking forward to not having to choose one trade-off over the other.

Reason077 2y ago
It’s noticeable if you’re used to the instant response of Oyster, but we’re talking about a few hundred extra milliseconds. Not something that bothers you once you’re accustomed to it. It’s still fast enough that it will read my Apple Watch before the gate starts to close from the passenger in front of me. One saved trip to an Oyster top-up machine will make up for a lifetime of contactless NFC latency!
- lxgr 2y ago
  Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet? The Japanese transit cards that are supported by Apple Pay have that option, and it's arguably the best of both worlds.
  - Reason077 2y ago
    > ”Is it not possible to top up a digital Oyster card on an iPhone or Apple Watch via an app or Apple Wallet?” It is, there’s even an auto top-up option that adds credit automatically if your balance drops below a certain level. But there’s no “digital” Oyster card, only physical ones. If you want to use a device to pay you have to use contactless. And either way, it’s still kind of a pain to have to maintain a balance - especially if you’re a tourist or visitor and don’t know exactly how much credit you’re going to need. I agree that being able to load a transit card into Apple Pay etc is also a good solution. The convenience of not having a physical card that can be easily lost or forgotten is probably the biggest benefit for me.
    - lxgr 2y ago

mardifoufs 2y ago

I think there are plans for contactless smartphone tickets in Montreal too. I wonder why they haven't done that yet, it's been years since they've started talking about it.

lxgr 2y ago

Hong Kong's Octopus card uses Felica, as far as I know. It's conceptually very similar to MIFARE – a fixed function IC implementing a fully offline stored value purse – but uses a stack that differs from ISO 14443 A on pretty much all layers. (It was planned to possibly become ISO 14443 C, but that never happened.)

shiroiushi 2y ago
>Hong Kong's Octopus card uses Felica, as far as I know. Yes: Felica was developed by Sony in Japan, but was actually first adopted in Hong Kong, then later in Japan. It's far better than other standards, because it's so fast.

ghaff 2y ago

I used up the balance of my Oyster card last time I was in London and just started using my credit card. If there's a difference I didn't notice.

landedgentry 2y ago

Hong Kong's Octopus card uses the FeliCa standard, not MIFARE.

grishka 2y ago

Isn't Mifare in different forms a de-facto standard for NFC subway tickets around the world? St Petersburg uses Mifare Classic (and tokens), Moscow also uses Mifare Classic for the refillable Troika card and Mifare Ultralight for disposable ones, Dubai "nol" card is a Mifare Desfire, Los Angeles "tap" card is a Mifare Classic, and, yes, the London Oyster is a Mifare Desfire EV1. Yes I actually went through my stack of transit cards and scanned those of them that I wasn't sure about. The only ones that I came across that are not Mifare, and not even readable by Android (but readable by the Flipper Zero), are the paper tickets used in Brussels. Then, of course, there are non-NFC tickets. For example those that use magnetic stripes, like the cute tiny ones in Paris or NYC's MetroCard.

ascorbic 2y ago
Japan uses FeliCa for its integrated transport cards (I just read an Osaka Metro ICOCA card with NFC Tools to check). This is used by quite a few systems around the world, including Hong Kong's Octopus.
grishka 2y ago
Update: some of those that I labeled as Mifare Classic are actually Mifare Plus, it's just that the app I'm using didn't distinguish them ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
account42 2y ago
That's a lot more MIFARE Classic than I would have expected considering that reader support for those is a lot less guaranteed these days. I guess a lot of them might be legacy systems.
ralferoo 2y ago
> the London Oyster is a Mifare Desfire EV1 There are two distinct types of Oyster card, but I don't know which is which, other than from a user perspective. All I know is that I had an old style one (the one without the white D in a blue square on the back) and you could still use it, you just couldn't "connect it" to the app so you couldn't look up your travel history. There was a complicated process for returning it and getting a replacement, but as they'd already phased in paying by bank card by then, and the only advantage of an oyster card was for season tickets, I just returned it and got my deposit back. But if you're into collecting different card types, you might want to try to get hold of one of these old ones as well. They're probably somewhat rare now, as they were encouraging people to upgrade to the new ones at least 5 years ago.