Yesterday, October 1, was the 15th day of the month by the lunar calendar. October is always a rush season of product announcements but the news cycle this year has been…well crazy doesn’t even begin to describe it. Part of the problem is COVID driven online announcement events. These were new and sorta cool 3 months ago but have degraded into slapdash scheduled info dumps.
It’s been especially brutal in Japan this week with the Docomo Account/Yucho Bank security crisis and NTT Docomo buyout stories soaking up all the media attention. On the ides of October we had Pixel 5, Wena 3 smartwatch, Apple Pay PASMO announcements, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange outage. Japanese IT journalists holed up at home or tiny APA HOTEL rooms are overwhelmed trying to keep up.
The Wena 3 announcement got a little lost in the shuffle but had some interesting e-payment developments: Suica, iD and QUICPay joined Rakuten Edy which has been on Wena for some time. It’s weird that Sony has taken this long to add, more or less, full FeliCa support in their home market.
Most of the online buzz was centered on Wena 3 Suica support which follows the Garmin Pay Suica launch in May. Wena 3 Suica shares the same Google Pay recharge backend that Garmin does, I suspect Wena 3 and Garmin both use Mobile FeliCa Cloud. The same Garmin restrictions also apply: no plastic card transfers, no Suica commuter passes, no auto-charge, no Green Seat upgrades.
That said I think many users will enjoy using Suica, iD and QUICPay wrapped in the strikingly designed Wena 3 lineup. My only regret is I don’t have one to tryout.
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