Japanese IT Journalist Junya Suzuki, the top journalist covering contactless payment tech in Japan published a new piece in Engadget Japan this morning and is very much worth your time if your Japanese is up to it.
He goes into finer detail over iOS 11 Apple Pay support for NFC Pay and T-Cubics’s deleted J/Speedy and Mastercard Contactless Apple Pay announcement (with a screen shot of the deleted page).
In short Apple Pay Japan supports NFC Pay (EMV Contactless) in iOS 11 as I wrote yesterday using the unique Apple Pay Japan device account two number scheme for each credit card. I am not sure how much smart NFC A-B-F switching is involved in the process, but at this post time the Apple Pay-NFC Pay back-end does not appear to be ready yet.
This is one reason T-Cubic quickly pulled their September 20 Apple Pay announcement. I suspect Visa Contactless is joining the party and was another reason one for the holdup.
The merit for Japanese users is that iOS 11 Apple Pay features allow them to use J/Speedy and Mastercard Contactless Apple Pay cards abroad. While this is convenient for NFC Pay compatible cards, it’s not yet clear if iOS 11 Apple Pay can provide the same benefit for FeliCa cards internationally as well. Perhaps it’s a backend thing.
KDDI au and NTT Docomo told Suzuki san that they are also working on NFC Pay credit card support as well but had no details at this time. It looks like there will be plenty of Apple Pay Japan announcements to look forward to in the coming weeks and months.
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