Re:Ask HN: Why are credit card chip readers so slow?
by zimpenfish on Monday June 26, 2017 @09:12AM
(#14636476)
It would help if they had more Oyster readers and/or better situated ones - at one popular station I use, there's two readers, side-by-side, right next to a tiny exit hole. Even just moving those two a couple of metres apart would improve the flow of humans greatly.
Re:Ask HN: Why are credit card chip readers so slow?
by mianos on Monday June 26, 2017 @12:23PM
(#14637959)
Oyster cards are settled between the reader and the card at the time of contact (then the reader will batch the transactions for forwarding later). POS are generally settled on the switch network, obviously this takes a lot longer.
Re:Ask HN: Why are credit card chip readers so slow?
by Reason077 on Monday June 26, 2017 @12:30PM
(#14638016)
TfL can and do batch contactless transactions, too.
The charge for travel on a given day is not made against your account until early the next morning. And card readers on buses, for example, don't always have a reliable data connection, so must be able to be processed offline.
You might be right that they are authorising in real time on the Tube readers, though. This would explain the poor performance.
However, using a contactless chip card is still a lot slower compared to using an Oyster card. Where as the Oyster card seems to process in a matter of milliseconds, the contactless card takes perhaps 2 seconds or more.
With a long queue of people all using contactless, this potentially adds up to quite a significant delay at the ticket gates.