Carefully crafted audio feedback is a helpful and important part of any user experience. The lovely Apple Pay ‘ka-ching’ sound is an excellent example of simple elegant audibility. From the very beginning in 2001, Japanese FeliCa payments incorporated sound feedback as a fundamental part of the customer experience. This was important because visual feedback from payment terminals at the time was minimal or missing altogether. Visual feedback is a lot better now with modern checkout display screens but audio feedback is important as ever.
JR East Suica: the classic Suica ‘pi’ is simple but effective. Simple is hard to do well and the petite, svelte Suica pi carries amazing well in extremely noisy, echoey stations without being annoying or blaring. For some reason it blends well with the Apple Pay sound. The full symphony of Suica feedback sounds are detailed here.
Suica at the cash register is the 2 pi sound which means the transaction has been deducted from the Suica stored fare (SF) as heard in this Suica TV ad, yet another happy catchy singing jingle ad that Japanese seem to prefer.
The other FeliCa payment networks each have their own payment sound heard in the following clip. In order: iD, nanaco, QUICPay, Edy and WAON.
The NFC-Pay sound is flat and blah:
Smartphone code payment apps like PayPay, au Pay, dBarai follow the FeliCa tradition and incorporate ‘payment complete’ sounds but these sounds come from your device app, not the payment terminal:
Suica, iD and QUICPay sounds are easy to hear in noisy environments like a cafe register area. Edy, nanaco, WAON and especially the lightweight soulless EMV Touch beep are easily lost in the shuffle. Japanese payment networks have the right idea: make those ‘all done’ feedback sounds distinctive, and fun.
In America I have yet to hear any NFC payment terminal sound feedback at all. At a noisy Starbucks it’s hard to even hear the Apple Pay sound. Payment networks and equipment vendors like Verifone should pay attention and put more effort into creating a better user experience with distinctive, carefully crafted feedback sounds.
And for goodness sake, make it fun.