I have a Clipper Card on my Android phone and pay for BART and SF Muni that way.

BART does now accept credit cards at the turnstiles now (I think this started 2 years ago). Agreed that it took a long while to get there, much much longer than in other places.

Personally I prefer the Clipper method, as it's generally faster to scan than a contactless credit card payment (that's going to always be the case for closed-loop payment system). I also like that BART (and Muni, Caltrain, etc.) will pay less to Visa/Mastercard/whomever in transaction fees if I use my Clipper card and periodically top it up (which, as I have my Clipper card on my phone, happens automatically if the balance ever falls below $10). Credit card tap-to-pay is a nice convenience for out-of-town visitors and for locals who rarely use transit and don't have Clipper (or who use a physical Clipper card but forgot it at home), but I don't think it's a great way to pay for transit day-to-day.

Oooh, even behind e.g London, the first city in the world to offer tap and pay with bank cards!

It's also the slowest possible system, there are benefits for a closed loop system: https://atadistance.net/2020/06/13/transit-gate-evolution-wh...

Now available on BART and coming to other Bay Area transit agencies.

https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/contactless-payments....

They introduced tap-to-pay with your credit card a few weeks ago.

I was going to say the same thing. I saw this and I don't even ride it regularly anymore.

I mean it auto fills/pays from my card. It's just one extra step at setup. I agree it would be nice to just take my card at the rail, but "Shockingly outdated" seems a bit dramatic lol. It's certainly not comparable to "70s USSR" idk where that came from

(which we've had to some extent for thirteen years now)

You can do that on BART as well.