Have Another Contactless Payment System

In Nagoya and Osaka you sometimes run into a contactless payment hardware jungle cluttering up the check out counter like the picture above. Let’s see, we have a J-MUPS reader covering basic Transit IC cards (Suica, etc.), iD and QUICPay. Then we have a PiTaPa reader, a Waon reader and a Rakuten EDY reader. Pulling up the rear is a QR Code scanner and a plain old EMV chip and PIN reader.

Too much choice is just as bad as too little. I said it before and will say it again: no matter what the media says, Japanese customers will not take up QR Code contactless payments.