After the October 21 launch of Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco e-Money cards, I updated my Apple Pay Japan chart. All I did was add WAON and nanaco logos to the official payment logos listed on the Apple Pay JP page (still not updated as of November 19):
After posting the update chart a reader asked a very good question: why not add the FeliCa reader logo as that is what you’ll often see on NFC readers in Japan. To which I say: ignore reader logos in Japan. Why? Because the reader physical compatibility mark that indicates the antenna location has nothing to do with what payments actually work at checkout. Apple isn’t doing anybody a favor listing the EMV logo in the Apple Pay Japan lineup. It only confuses users.
Let’s play that game again, the ‘which logo is the official NFC logo’ game. Choose:
The correct answer is #2, the NFC Forum logo. The reader physical compatibility mark for EMV is #1, FeliCa is #3. But you never see the NFC Forum logo on NFC readers, what you see is usually something like this:
The Panasonic reader shown above has both EMV and FeliCa logos on the tap area. The store has also attached a card that displays what payments are accepted, in this case both EMV (VISA, mastercard) and FeliCa (iD, Suica•PASMO, WAON, nanaco) are accepted. Looks good right? Not really. The EMV and FeliCa marks are the physical compatibility mark that indicate the antenna location. However, most people assume the physical compatibility mark mean the reader works for all payments…which it does not. Some stores with an EMV physical compatibility marked reader don’t support EMV, and vice versa: FeliCa is supported on the reader but not the POS checkout.
What to do? Let’s see…the NFC Forum is responsible for basic certification of all NFC devices so let’s put their logo on reader instead. Oh wait, can’t do that because people will think it’s a Nespresso machine instead of an NFC reader:
Time for a new NFC logo.
It might seem like a good idea to separate NFC hardware from the payment services that run on top of the hardware. The reality is, it’s impossible to do because all-in-one NFC chips do it all. The NFC Forum could spend a ton of money creating a new NFC logo that can be used everywhere…but what’s the point? Nobody will use it even if they do.
NFC readers come in all kind of shapes and sizes for all kinds of end uses, from supermarket checkout, to transit gates, and vending machines, and much more. If nothing else remember this: the physical compatibility mark is there to indicate the antenna location and show you where to tap, that’s all it’s there for. It can be anything. It should match the service it’s intended to fulfill.
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