snapped?
So maybe it's been easy to escape, but next week the new Snapper cards come into circulation.
Anyone who travels on a Wellington Bus cannot have failed to notice the newly installed orange and black fish logo-ed teardrops at the front and side doors. These are the readers for the cards. Just wave the card over the reader, and value is debited from them to fund your bus trip. You can recharge them over the 'net (but only if you have a Windows PC and a masochistic willingness to subject yourself to Internet Explorer) and at any of the supporting cafés and former 10-trip ticket sellers.
It all sounds pretty good really: no more being stuck for the right change; never a click short on your 10-trip; and never even having to think about how much extra is stop past your usual. And then there's the possibility (as some of us, trialling Snapper, are doing now) of putting the first coffee of the morning on it as well.
And it's cool. We like the logo; the different form factors; and just the sheer techno-geekery at play.
Others have been positive, too; Poneke has had a reasonable time with their card. So here at Wellingtonista we're all really looking forward to it.
We do have a few questions though, (after the jump):
- Will retailers really go for the 1% transaction fee that Snapper charge for every transaction put through it? Even when Snapper are busy collecting interest on the float taken from customers? The Retailers Association are not so sure. If retailers don't, does this mean that Snapper is still sustainable on the buses alone, given the comments by the Snapper CEO that New Zealand's low use of public transport meant that "our strategy has been to view this at the very beginning as a broader small value payments scheme"?
- How private is it? How long do Snapper keep the records of all your transactions and bus trips for (other than the "indefinite period" mentioned in the Privacy Policy)? Who else may have access to these? (This ain't cash, remember.)
- How secure is it? Can we be sure that the cards, and the value associated with them, can't be cloned? Are they similar, or do they use the same chipset, as the London Oyster cards, reportedly cracked in the last few months?
Questions, questions. So, does the fish have legs? We hope so...
That would be great, Stephen.
I think you could probably buy and recharge a card using cash only, to retain a degree of pseudonymity...
The logo looks very Christian to me, but I do like the concept.
Speaking as a retailer, 1% is a lot less than a credit card fee, and bugger all on a coffee.
The 1% transaction fee is considerably less than the transaction fee that the retailer would have to cover for a credit card transaction - in that respect they should be only too happy...
But the comparison here is to other methods of small-value payments, like cash and EFTPOS. I'm not so sure that 1% is cheaper than either of those two widely-used alternatives.
So, if you don't have enough money when you exit a bus, what are you supposed to do?
As I understand it, you will have been alerted to any low balance (less than $20, I think) on your previous bus trips, giving you enough time to top it up.
Having utilised the Oyster Card system in London for a couple of years, I'd say this is great news for regular public-travellers in Wellington. Hopefully some weekly/monthly snapper plans will come about too.
Being able to use it in shops is a handy addition which makes sense too.
How does the fare structure work with these compared with other methods of payment? Is it replacing a 10-trip ticket?
Presumably the buses will run a little more efficiently when people use this system. (Less money carried by the driver, less need to play with change or count ticket clips, faster entry to the bus, etc etc). Is it likely that any financial incentives would be passed back to users?
The MetroCard system was one of the best things about the Christchurch bus service when I was there a few years ago, but they've added a few more incentives than just avoiding small change. The system tracks how much people have spent recently, and MetroCard users never have to pay more than 2 fares worth in a day, or more than 10 fares in a week. (So if you go to work and back every day, you get the weekends for free.) Being able to switch buses within 2 hours of the initial fare is also a great thing, although I think they allow that with cash payments too.
Today I received my Snapper USB token (As part of a trial) and have put some photos of the unit on my blog here.
It has the ANZ Bank branding on the protective sleeve which I don't believe the public will get on its intitial online sale.
Pretty cool - I get a Platinium pass every month atm, so I just flash that on any bus I want, but when my current contract runs out I might look at getting one of these for convenience.
I agree about the Christian fish thing though -- when I first saw the swiper on the bus I thought it was advertising!
Re: privacy, well, what are they going to know from your bus pass account that they can't find out in other ways, I guess? Do you have to fill out anything more than name/address/basic details that your bank/et al have anyway?
~~~
Eagles may soar, but rats don't get sucked into jet engines.
What are they going to know that they don't know anyway?
Right now I can get a 10 trip ticket for cash. No one knows I bought it, no one knows when or where I travel on it. And it cannot be read by a nearby reader without my knowing.
Potentially a Snapper card could be used to monitor your travel habits, and tie them to you.
(Since it works by RFID, other readers than official Snapper readers could be discreetly sniffing for cards too, but that's not really a worry for now).
This sets the scene for Big-Brother style monitoring of movement. And it's not just the thing itself that bugs me. See, now you might say "how's this worse than a monthly pass - it's almost the same" and then some more intrusive thing will come along and people will say "well, it's not much worse than Snapper" and then in a few years we'll be habituated to having people we don't know capturing our movement around town with few if any guarantees about what they'll do with that data.
There's no NEED for cards to be tied to a person's identity - it's completely gratuitous. It doesn't bring any benefit worth having to me and it is ripe for abuse.
So I asked if my local dairy would be selling the Snapper cards, given that:
a) they are located right beside a major busstop and
b) their signage says they sell "buscards"
The owners reaction was a hand wave, a shake of the head and a "we'll see, we'll see"
At least your local dairy sells some kind of bus card - mine doesn't and it's right on the bus stop. Grr.
The one on Riddiford opp. Caltext stn sells 'em. It's a teeny bit further away though.
I think the guy down by the zoo does too.
So is there any way to buy trips for more than one person with Snapper cards in the same way that cash and 10 trips are transferable?
You don't need to register your details to get the card, so you can remain (fairly) anonymous. Though naturally data mining techiniques can narrow down who is who. And of course if you recharge it online they get your details and naturally store this with your snapper's record.
1% fee for retailers, ridiculous!
25c for topping up your card, ridiculous!
Shouldn't forget in NZ the only thing that made EFTPOS so successful is that it was all free. Here in Aus I'm still having a hard time remembering to carry fat wads of cash (and I've been here 3 months already). Barely anywhere accepts EFTPOS. Love to see these be successful though in NZ.
These work well for transit so hopefully it takes off for that at least (and Taxi's too please).
Suprise,
The snapper.co.nz website, which had originally said snapper cards would be available for purchase on Monday 14th July, has changed now the 14th has come and gone, replaced with "soon"...
You'll be able to catch a Snapper soon on-line or through our retail network. Watch for our sale announcement soon.
I guess they haven't quite resolved the teething problems yet.
The privacy angle particularly bugs me.
One defensive measure is to regularly swap empty cards with others, but that isn't necessarily going to be easy to arrange, and won't work well without a big pool of participants.
S 12.d, where they say they will disclose information "where your safety, or the safety of others in the community, is at risk" is no doubt the section where they will roll over for the authorities without a warrant.
It's also not clear to me how you obtain a card anonymously.
I have written to them just now; if I get answers back, I'll post them here.