What’s the difference between Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco?

I always like Sachiko Watatani’s articles, she always has practical insights other journalists seem to miss. Her quick review of Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco is no exception. As a long time user of WAON and nanaco on Osaifu Keitai, both feature phone and Android, the additions of WAON and nanaco to the Apple Pay Japan e-Money lineup completes it enough for her to migrate to iPhone for daily use. On the face of it both cards are almost exactly alike, they work the same and have the same ¥50,000 balance limit. Wanatani san explains the differences.

Transferring a standard rainbow nanaco card and creating a new WAON in Wallet is a breeze. Creating WAON requires adding a minimum balance of ¥1,000, however one of the nice things about doing it with WAON app is you can create a ¥0 balance card, same for nanaco app.

WAON has the most options and no sign-up Wallet creation. A unique WAON app feature is custom region WAON cards, AEON donates part of the transaction purchase to the selected region of the card. There are 159 varieties of custom region WAON. The unique feature of nanaco app is card migration from Android to iPhone. It’s a oneway migration. Watatani san makes the same observation I did yesterday that a nice feature of nanaco card in Wallet is that is displays both balance and points saving users a trip to an outside app.

The big feature for both cards is the Apple Pay recharge backend. VISA brand is the odd man out, again, but mastercard, JCB and American Express credit/debit cards are all good. Users can also set auto-charge options using Seven Card in nanaco app and AEON cards in WAON app. Watatani san is the only review to mention the very unique feature of Apple Pay WAON: parents can setup a WAON card using the Apple Watch family setup option and recharge a child’s WAON card remotely via Messages.