As anticipated by Android Police earlier this month Suica has officially launched on Google Pay in Japan. Mobile Suica has been available on the Android platform since 2011 via the Osaifu-Keitai e-wallet service offered by the major Japanese carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI au and Softbank. For Japanese customers on Android, Google Pay offers a limited sub-set of full e-wallet services they already have.
With this rollout all the major stored value “prepaid” e-money cards are now on Google Pay: Suica, WAON, nananco and Rakuten EDY. JCB and JACCS credit card support and the Japanese P2P payments startup Kyash service is promised for later this summer. Only Osaifu-Keitai models from the major JP carriers (for the most part) support Google Pay Japan. As I wrote earlier, FeliCa support on Android devices outside of the Japan market is a complicated story, Google native support of FeliCa has been uneven at best. Support for the major FeliCa payment networks iD and QUICPay is missing.
Hopefully we’ll get a clearer picture in the days ahead.
UPDATE: as suspected, Google Pay Suica requires a Osaifu-Keitai ready smartphone and Android 5. Google is not going to promote or make a Global FeliCa Android answer to the Global FeliCa iPhone. Pixel 2, Android Pay and HCE-F made that clear.
UPDATE 2: looks like Google Pay Suica does not have native support for Suica Commuter Pass creation/renewal or extra functionality that Suica App provides to Apple Pay Suica users, also only a single Suica card per Android device is supported. Mobile Suica app to the rescue.
UPDATE 3: Android users who can’t use Google Pay Suica out of the box are losing their shit.
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