> ”the chip is so minuscule that the amount of waste is trivial”
It does add significant costs to the transport system. Single-use NFC cards must cost at least a few cents to produce and dispense, which adds up when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of rides every day.
Even reusable NFC cards are costly in terms of providing all the infrastructure to support them: software, servers, enough top-up machines in stations to handle peak demand, commissions to retailers selling the cards, extra staff to deal with customer support, delays and congestion caused by top-up/ticketing queues, etc.
That’s one reason London’s TfL has been pushing everyone to just use their bank-issued contactless credit/debit cards (or NFC-enabled phones) for years now.
It’s also more convenient, of course, to never have to worry about your balance or recharging the card.
It does add significant costs to the transport system. Single-use NFC cards must cost at least a few cents to produce and dispense, which adds up when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of rides every day.
Even reusable NFC cards are costly in terms of providing all the infrastructure to support them: software, servers, enough top-up machines in stations to handle peak demand, commissions to retailers selling the cards, extra staff to deal with customer support, delays and congestion caused by top-up/ticketing queues, etc.
That’s one reason London’s TfL has been pushing everyone to just use their bank-issued contactless credit/debit cards (or NFC-enabled phones) for years now.
It’s also more convenient, of course, to never have to worry about your balance or recharging the card.