iPhone SE: more Apple Pay Suica making way for Mobile PASMO

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Suica was the big thing that put Apple Pay front and center in Japan. It still does, everybody loves using Apple Pay Suica Express Transit for Face/Touch ID-free transit and store payment in our face mask era. The funny thing is that Apple is slowing removing Suica as the Apple Pay Japan poster child. The process started with iOS 13.4 Apple Pay Wallet blurb text that removed the hot market brand ‘Suica’ name replacing it with the very pedestrian unmarketable ‘transit’.

Now we have another Suica removal from the iPhone SE spec page Apple Pay section. Other iPhone 11/Pro/XS model spec pages all have the Suica blurb. Why? I said it before and say it again: Suica has massive brand recognition in Japan and Apple Pay has leveraged the Suica brand at every opportunity. Apple would not swap Suica for generic wording lightly, not without a very good reason. That reason is more transit IC cards coming to Apple Pay: Mobile PASMO, please stand when your name is called.

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UPDATE August 6 2020: Apple Pay PASMO Announcement
Right on cue, PASMO announced Apple Pay PASMO for 2020. Let’s say this is a iOS 14 release goodie for October and keep fingers crossed. Mobile PASMO is licensed Mobile Suica IT assets (and may even be hosted on Mobile Suica), so everything is easy to qualify and test since it has be in use since 2016. Of course it will all work on any iPhone 8 / Apple Watch Series 3 or later from anywhere.

This is a great run up for Super Suica in 2021…Mobile ICOCA…Mobile TOICA… and all the rest. More in depth analysis here.