Public transit in Stockholm has in the last ten years done two things that make for a godlike ride payment UX:
1. Removed the concept of zones - everything is now covered by one single ticket
2. Introduced tap-to-pay support for debit/credit cards
This means that you as a user can always just show up with the overwhelmingly most common way to pay for things in Sweden - by card - tap once, and then you're done. No more actions required. Need to transfer? No problem, the virtual ticket you bought by tapping your card is valid for 75 minutes, no more money will be charged if you tap again within this window.
No fumbling with an app, no awkward QR code scanning, just one tap and go. Peak UX.
Same with Edinburgh. Except that we also cap daily and weekly fees. So it's £2.20 for a single ticket to anywhere, maxing out at £5.00 per day, and £24.50 per week.
(And if you're regularly travelling more than that, then you can pay for a card that will give you unlimited bus/tram travel for £70/month.)
I'm a bit jealous of those prices, there are no caps on Stockholm transit if paid for on single tickets, and the price of a single ticket is 43 SEK (£3.45). The best deal available for period tickets is the unlimited monthly pass for 1060 SEK (£85).
I am a member of the curious club of native Android app engineers working in fintech (banking in particular, but payments is a huge part of the banking business). So I can certainly sympathize with two groups of people:
1. The Vipps mobile team, who have been forced to update the app through some business requirement, most likely compliance-driven, as "politically-exposed person" is straight out of United States banking regulations; thus, the requirement to ask this single yes/no question bleeds through every payment system in the world that could potentially interact with a US bank account, whether or not their customers are subject to said regulations; of which the Vipps compliance team has most certainly, very recently, become acutely aware; hence the Android app's "Update" button, which cannot solve the underlying cache problem in which Google Play Services has not become aware of a pending update to the Vipps app, knowledge currently availed to only the Vipps backend and Google Play installations which have not attempted too many exponential-backoff-retries because they're on a fucking train.
2. Any and all customer service representatives involved, who have to untangle the above to separate requirement from implementation from quirk, find the right person on the mobile team who already knows it's a mess but can't do anything to solve it, and relay the single nonsensical instruction to the customer to resolve the issue: "Settings -> Apps -> See all -> Google Play Services -> Clear cache, reboot".
Trying to use Microsoft Authenticator without Google services is something circular like this:
Log in.
You need to set up MS Authenticator. Get the app then scan this code.
Sigh, download app. Open it.
Add new account. Scan QR code.
You need to install MS Authenticator to continue. Click here to download the app. From inside the app!
Must be what non-computer people feel about things the whole time. It's like some fairy tale where the wizards have lost control of the capricious magic.
The control literally two companies have over whether most modern Western systems work at all is a bit concerning.
Public transit in Stockholm has in the last ten years done two things that make for a godlike ride payment UX:
1. Removed the concept of zones - everything is now covered by one single ticket 2. Introduced tap-to-pay support for debit/credit cards
This means that you as a user can always just show up with the overwhelmingly most common way to pay for things in Sweden - by card - tap once, and then you're done. No more actions required. Need to transfer? No problem, the virtual ticket you bought by tapping your card is valid for 75 minutes, no more money will be charged if you tap again within this window.
No fumbling with an app, no awkward QR code scanning, just one tap and go. Peak UX.
Same with Edinburgh. Except that we also cap daily and weekly fees. So it's £2.20 for a single ticket to anywhere, maxing out at £5.00 per day, and £24.50 per week.
(And if you're regularly travelling more than that, then you can pay for a card that will give you unlimited bus/tram travel for £70/month.)
I'm a bit jealous of those prices, there are no caps on Stockholm transit if paid for on single tickets, and the price of a single ticket is 43 SEK (£3.45). The best deal available for period tickets is the unlimited monthly pass for 1060 SEK (£85).
I am a member of the curious club of native Android app engineers working in fintech (banking in particular, but payments is a huge part of the banking business). So I can certainly sympathize with two groups of people:
1. The Vipps mobile team, who have been forced to update the app through some business requirement, most likely compliance-driven, as "politically-exposed person" is straight out of United States banking regulations; thus, the requirement to ask this single yes/no question bleeds through every payment system in the world that could potentially interact with a US bank account, whether or not their customers are subject to said regulations; of which the Vipps compliance team has most certainly, very recently, become acutely aware; hence the Android app's "Update" button, which cannot solve the underlying cache problem in which Google Play Services has not become aware of a pending update to the Vipps app, knowledge currently availed to only the Vipps backend and Google Play installations which have not attempted too many exponential-backoff-retries because they're on a fucking train.
2. Any and all customer service representatives involved, who have to untangle the above to separate requirement from implementation from quirk, find the right person on the mobile team who already knows it's a mess but can't do anything to solve it, and relay the single nonsensical instruction to the customer to resolve the issue: "Settings -> Apps -> See all -> Google Play Services -> Clear cache, reboot".
Trying to use Microsoft Authenticator without Google services is something circular like this:
Log in.
You need to set up MS Authenticator. Get the app then scan this code.
Sigh, download app. Open it.
Add new account. Scan QR code.
You need to install MS Authenticator to continue. Click here to download the app. From inside the app!
Must be what non-computer people feel about things the whole time. It's like some fairy tale where the wizards have lost control of the capricious magic.
The control literally two companies have over whether most modern Western systems work at all is a bit concerning.