Introducing new IT systems is a complex operation and so to protect the operation it is normally thoroughly tested on QA infrastructure that mirrors the production version. The most difficulty thing to do is include the human element as you obviously get different skill levels of the users. The best way to rollout a new system to the public to do it in phases. The use of a digital card using NFC technology should be no different that using a physical card, tap to pay is a prime example, the banks introduced it and slowly people started to use it, there was no big-bang approach, then along came Apple who introduced Apple-Pay, effectively a digital version of tap to pay, this was followed by Android and Goggle, the advantage of them being the bio-metrics that offer greater security.
Clearly, introducing a digital NFC season card is far more difficult that bank cards, there are no friends and family issues such as children to consider with bank cards. I'm baffled by the club's stance on this, to suggest that the alternative is printing tickets at the stadium is a nonsense, introduction of another level of queuing good grief do they live in the real world?
The way this should have been introduced is by giving an option of physical or digital maybe, with an incentive such as a club shop voucher to go digital after all the cards cost in the region off £5 plus the additional administration and the postage / theft during delivery.
So, they have decided on the big-bang approach I'm truly baffled as to why I can only assume that the whole infrastructure has been replaced that only allows digital but I still find that unlikely the entry is controlled by a chip that has information that the reader needs to validate entry wherever the chip is shouldn't matter
Luckily I don't have any issues with technology, and I'm in my first season as an over 65, I have a smart phone I've added the "ticket" to my Apple wallet in a matter of minutes and the only issue I might have is there is some issue at the stadium I always arrive early so hopefully I should be in my seat for kick-off.
When we moved to CoMS it was the first stadium in the UK to have a NFC entry system and I don't remember any real difficulty, interesting the readers weren't tap but you placed your card in an wide slot which would illuminate blue when verified this was because at the time "tap to.." wasn't around.
