Mizuho Suica for Apple Pay raises questions and fascinating possibilities way beyond yesterday’s announcement. Why now and why only Apple Pay? Is this the first of many Suica branded cards coming to Apple Pay?
The announcement was short, small and caught Japanese IT journalists off guard. Nobody anticipated Apple Pay Suica branding just appearing and working with a wallet app update. It’s slick and in true Apple fashion ‘just works’, but journalists missed important points with huge ramifications:
- Mizuho Suica only exists as a virtual card hosted on the Mobile Suica Cloud, there is no plastic equivalent
- DNP provides the Mizuho Wallet app backend
Put together this means the Apple Pay Suica branding vehicle is complete and ready to roll. Almost exactly the model outlined earlier.
The only remaining question is how many other transit companies and banks are going to get on? It’s tempting to think that with another Apple Event approaching, Suica’s eight sisters will join the Apple Pay branding parade: PASMO, ICOCA, TOICA, manaca, Kitaka, SUGOCA, HAYAKAKEN, nimoca. That’s probably a long shot but the vehicle is ready and waiting if they decide to join and time is running out if other transit areas want to benefit from the flood of inbound visitors anticipated for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The Apple Pay Japan strategy of focusing on the stored value Suica transit card more than credit cards has been a tremendous success. Transit truly is the golden uptake path for contactless payments, exactly as the recent and widely regurgitated Juniper Research piece pointed out but everybody seemed to miss that point.
None of the other Japanese transit cards are on mobile but everybody building their own cloud infrastructure is out of the question. If JR East, DNP and Apple can coax the other Japanese transit cards to join the Suica branding scheme that finally offers commuter plans and more for everywhere and not just Tokyo, Apple Pay will easily become the de facto mobile wallet for Japan.
UPDATE 1: the Apple Pay Suica branding program is underway, sources say ‘stay tuned’ for more Apple Pay Japan payments and apps in the near future, September and October are the usual suspects.
UPDATE 2: I think one reason why Japanese journalists missed the virtual only Mizuho Suica point is because the Android Mizuho Wallet App release earlier this year also had virtual cards with one very important difference. Android Mizuho Wallet creates virtual Mizuho QUICPay JCB Debit cards not Suica. Mizuho Debit cards are hosted on the Mizuho system just like their credit cards. Virtual Suica branded cards are hosted on the JR East Mobile Suica Cloud, a completely different system with completely different implications.
UPDATE 3: I hate the blog title and am utterly clueless trying to find a better one that exactly captures why this is an important development.
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