ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[avernar]

At some point, it becomes excessive, and is its own, worse, UI problem. I’d rather “sometimes I’m confused as to whether my card has been read” than “sometimes I’m confused why I’ve paid for the fares of half the passengers in the station”. For a parking garage entrance it might be OK, since all it’s doing is opening the door (I assume). For anything that is even remotely ATM like, in that it can cost the card’s owner money, it’s not OK. But if it’s the difference between “card pretty much needs to touch terminal” and “card just needs to be within 10cm of terminal”, your Option 2 is probably best.

Again, good UI design is needed.  A LOUD beep and very obvious screen indication plus a delay between taps.  I'm assuming here you tap more that once per person with you.

Security implications, yikes! That 1-1.5m read you describe boosts the interception distance up to, what 10m instead of the 1m for a typical tap like for a card terminal in a store?

I'd pick the secure option of having users lay their fare card on the sensor, just like how 99% of people lay their car on the screen of a card terminal in a store.

I was just giving an example of what's possible.  There should be no problem getting them to accept cards 4cm away.  I've never lay my card down on an in store terminal (many are at an angle) in the odd time I can't use my phone.

Keep in mind that if most cards require touching distance then weak cards will not read at all.  Better to have most read at 4cm.