In September 2003, JJ came to me with a deal. He had been working for six months for a Korean company called C&C Enterprise Co., Ltd., a typical Korean-English name for a “computer and communications” company specializing in public transit fare collection. They had an idea that was so simple, it had eluded the world for decades. Instead of transit agencies issuing their own pass cards to the subways and buses of Seoul, C&C’s hardware accepted credit cards at the transit gates just like any normal credit card transaction. The charge would appear on your statement at the end of the month automatically. The system had been running in Seoul for eight years successfully but no other city in the world had adopted it yet.
My immediate reaction was, “Brilliant! Why doesn’t everybody do it this way?”
