4 ms·
At peak hours it can definitely be a problem, you really need the entire pipeline to work well. There's going to be somebody behind you most of the time, and yo
by rtpg 2y ago
At peak hours it can definitely be a problem, you really need the entire pipeline to work well. There's going to be somebody behind you most of the time, and you really don't want people stuck at the gates.
In Japan credit card transactions routinely take a couple seconds. Imagine each person taking 5 seconds to go through the gate! I think what trials for credit card payments in transportation services there are doing is simply not processing the transaction inline, and just doing it after the fact (assuming it will go through).
- Reason077 2y agoYes, the TfL system does a partial authorisation. It checks the card is valid and not blocked etc but doesn’t necessarily do a real-time authorisation all the way to the issuing bank. If you try to use a card that is valid but has no available balance/credit, it might work for the first ride but then be blocked when you try to use it for the return trip. Fares are batched throughout the day and you are charged once, overnight, for all rides that day (after applying any multi-ride discounts, etc). This is different from some other cities where I’ve used contactless payments and they’d charge you immediately for each ride, giving you lots of annoying little charges on your bank statement!
- rtpg 2y agoWonder how they block the card, my impression was that tokenization was meant to make it harder for card chargers to be able to track a card through multiple taps like that.
- reitanuki 2y agoThey must have the card identity because you have to explicitly 'tap out' at the other end, if you don't want to be billed with a maximum fare. Don't ask me how though
- rtpg 2y agoI love this reasoning! Absolutely succinct
- Reason077 2y agoTfL not only gets your Apple Pay device account number (DAN), but can also associate it with the primary card number (PAN). Both magically appear if you add the primary card to your online TfL account and have used the associated Apple Pay device with TfL before.