... wireless pickpocketing era

[Mark Lomas]

On 09/05/07, Ian G Batten <ian.batten@uk.fujitsu.com> wrote:
> Moreover, I've paid for two meals now with no authorisation on my
> credit card: hand it over, they pop it in a machine and hand it
> back.  There's some C&P, which amazingly interworks (or is ignored: I
> didn't think to type a wrong PIN to check), but I couldn't convince a
> Shinkasen ticket machine that claimed to do C&P to take my cards last
> night at Shinagawa station, so I'm off today to find some cash to buy
> them with --- I don't fancy negotiating buying a train ticket in very
> broken English.

I visit Japan quite often as my wife is Japanese.  I have tried a number
of C&P devices and concluded that the places where interoperability
would be most useful don't work, but sometimes you get a pleasant surprise.

For example many banks won't accept foreign debit cards even though
they display logos such as Visa or Mastercard.  However I found that the
Japanese Post Office accepts foreign Visa cards.

Somebody in the security department of NTT told me that the phone
company deliberately turned off compatibility with foreign cards after
finding that they accounted for a disproportionate amount of fraud.  It
may be that JR had a similar experience.

        Mark