It’s interesting how different story threads weave together. Taiwan has been running a huge “come visit Taiwan” campaign in Japan the past year or so. Even Mastercard Japan has been in the game highlighting how easy it is for Japanese iPhone users to use Apple Pay when visiting Taiwan. It’s probably the only credit card ad out there that promotes iPhone Apple Pay NFC switching.
I ran across a Japanese notice put out by the Taiwanese Representative Office in Tokyo announcing that EasyCard and iPass will accept credit card recharge starting in October when a reader contacted me with some interesting NFC switching related EasyCard and iPass tech information: Tokens use FeliCa while IC cards use MIFARE, the NFC chips support both NFC-A and NFC-F as required by NFC certification.
What does it all mean and why is EasyCard and iPass credit card recharge starting in October? The timing certainly fits well with a new Apple iPhone Event but could mean nothing since the announcement is for plastic credit card recharge at a kiosk. From a system standpoint it could mean that Taiwan is getting ready to put EasyCard and iPass on Apple Pay Transit as credit card recharge needs to be in place before hosting a transit card system on a mobile wallet platform.
EasyCard/iPass Apple Pay Transit support requires MIFARE middleware and MIFARE has been a major missing piece so far in Apple Pay. Having that in the iOS 12 official release would open up Apple Pay Transit for native EasyCard and iPass card support. Support for MIFARE transit card systems in Korea, UK, Australia and North America would also be possible but requires the cooperation of local transit operators.
Apple Pay support of EasyCard and iPass would be great not only for iPhone users in Taiwan but a boon for inbound visitors too just like it is for inbound Apple Pay Suica users.
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