Transit Card vs. Payment Card 
Multiple Express Transit Cards in iOS 12.3 and later, not recommended for Suica users
The EMV Express Transit option that arrived with iOS 12.3 is completely useless in Japan. Japanese transit companies will never support it because EMV is a poor technology match, not only because it kneecaps fast transit gate performance but also because complex fare structures cannot be supported on the EMV payment card read only format. Things might have been different if EMVCo had incorporated NFC-F and some FeliCa technology into their spec, but that will probably never happen either.
Nevertheless, people like me are intrigued by the multiple Express Transit card support in Wallet for native transit cards and EMV payment cards. I use Apple Pay Suica everyday and decided to turn on EMV Express Transit to see if there is any performance overhead. There is.
After a week of testing I can definitely say that turning on EMV Express Transit and using Apple Pay Suica is a bad dance. Express Transit momentarily forgets which way the NFC reader needs to spin. Instead of a smooth Suica waltz, there is a momentary pause and uncomfortable interlocking of arms. EMV Express Transit seems to introduce some new NFC dance steps into the usual read/write process that slows things down at transit gate readers a little and store readers by a noticeably wide gap.
Take it with a grain of salt as I can only test Apple Pay Suica + EMV Express Transit on a single iPhone XS running iOS 13 beta 7. Other devices running iOS 12.4 or the official iOS 13 release may be OK. A good rule of thumb is to forgo multiple Express Transit cards and stick with a single Express Transit card. Leave EMV Express Transit off if you don’t need it.
I’d love to hear any Apple Pay Suica + EMV Express Transit user feedback, please tweet @Kanjo if you have some observations to share.
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