Japanese IC cards are so amazingly fast I don’t even have to slow down from a fast walk when paying for access to the subway line, or any train or vending machine for that matter.
In other countries, you have to tap the card on the machine and leave it there for a few seconds before it registers your pay.
How did japan get their IC cards to work so fast?
In: Technology
its a bit over half a year since i looked it up and i dont feel like doing it rn (sleepy) but AFAIK they use the FeliCa rfid standard that is specifically optimized for speed, most of the world doesnt use it because you would have to pay a fee to Sony. whereas most other rfid standards and the EMV payment card system can be used by many companies (if you want to use it in japan “visa de tachi dajobu desu ka” is a useful sentence so they don’t try the other style card terminal).
that is also the reason that only few phone brands can be used at those gates without activating/ buying the phone in Japan (the iphone activates the feature when you are in japan, google pixel also do something like that i think, most others don’t do anything unless you bought the japan edition)
one neat thing about FeliCa enabled phones is that it works completely autonomously from the phone, even if it doesn’t have any battery. so theres no time wasted going through the phones processing before sending the authentication reply to the scanner
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