At the right, the ticket appears to have golden smart-card contacts, like a credit card with an EMV chip. However, those contacts are completely fake, just printed onto the card with ink, and there is no chip there. Presumably, the makers thought that making the card look like a smart card would help people understand it. The card actually uses an entirely different technology.
ArticleIn this article, the author looks at the NFC chips inside Montreal subway tickets. It's an interesting read in and off itself and he covers a wide range of information about the NFC chip from the high level design to manufacturing the chips and everything in between.
One thing that caught my eye while reading this was how the ticket designers use a somewhat deceptive design to communicate how the ticket should be used.
What they did is print an image of the yellow chip seen on most credit and debit cards on the ticket to take advantage of the fact that we, as a society, now know that that means the card can be tapped to be used.
However, the kicker is that while the ticket does work by tapping, the underlying technology has nothing to do with the technology used in payment cards.
Another case of using UI to improve UX.
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