Suica is the only transit card in the world on mobile that covers both high-speed rail and regular transit. Apple Pay Suica can be used for eTicket Shinkansen travel on all Shinkansen lines and ticketless travel in designated regions on JR East Shinkansen lines. However, Shinkansen eTickets are often more about convenience over price: paper tickets usually have better on the spot discounts unless you dig deeper into the system and sign up for services in advance.
Shinkansen eTicketing is a evolutionary mix of 2 different ticketing systems built by the separate JR company groups that operate the Shinkansen lines:
- JR East created and used Mobile Suica cloud eTickets downloaded to Apple Pay Suica, Google Pay Suica and Osaifu Keitai for travel on Tohoku, Yamagata, Akita, Hokkaido, Joestsu, Hokuriku Shinkansen. This was replace by a new Shinkansen eTicket service called Eki-Net. This is a cloud linked service very similar to smartEX.
- JR Central/JR West created and use the EX system (smartEX and Express Reserve) that links a online purchased eTicket to a preregistered plastic transit smartcard for travel on Tokaido (Tokyo~Osaka) Sanyo (Osaka~Hakata) Shinkansen. It is not a download eTicketing service for mobile devices because JR Central/JR West don’t have a Mobile Suica cloud-like transit card system. In this case Apple Pay Suica is just another linked transit card number, EX doesn’t know or care if it’s a plastic card or not.
JR East also offers ticketless Shinkansen travel for any Touch and Go service registered Apple Pay Suica or plastic transit IC card. Just like EX, the Touch and Go system doesn’t know or care if it’s a real card or not.
Related post:
Eki-Net Mobile Ticketing Quick Guide
EX Mobile Ticketing Quick Guide
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