I’ve been a “beta” tester of the new Translink card payment system for San Francisco public transport for a while now, but am amazed at the credit card payment process for these cards. As you can tell from the video below it appears to still use a dial-up process to authenticate and process credit card payments. So while you’re on your way to somewhere important, and realize you need to add value to your card you have to wait for a modem to dial up a credit card auth. I sure hope they speed up this process before it gets popular! Given, there are better ways to refill your card such as online or via the automatic enrollment. But this system is really supposed to be better than the old, and using a card to add value is now apparently two steps backwards.