The April 19 launch of SBI Neobank Mastercard debit card support for Apple Pay was a bit unique: the first time that a plastic issue Japanese debit card came to Apple Pay and the first Apple Pay Japan debit card supporting the FeliCa iD payment network. Another interesting aspect is that only the Mastercard version supports Apple Pay, the VISA version is plastic only with VISA Touch (EMV contactless) support.
There are plenty of bank app issue digital only debit cards from JCB, Mizuho, MUFG and others on Apple Pay. These all work on JCB’s QUICPay (FeliCa) and J/Speedy(EMV) payment networks. Apple Pay Japan supports many different mobile payment network cards thanks to Mobile FeliCa support, by far the largest selection of Apple Pay payment networks in the world: EMV (VISA, Mastercard, AMEX, JCB), iD, QUICPay, Suica, PASMO, nanaco, WAON. But VISA issue debit cards are not supported even though there are many, not a single one on Apple Pay.
Wasn’t this taken care of by the May 2021 Apple and VISA JP agreement? For credit cards yes, one year later they are still at odds over FeliCa support in debit cards. VISA Japan brand debit cards are VISA Touch EMV contactless exclusive, single mode cards. VISA JP credit cards are dual mode EMV/FeliCa for plastic and smartphones, but not debit cards. We don’t know the reason but debit cards deifintely fit the budget customer category while credit cards come with credit checks, perks and card membership fees for upscale cards.
As an easily available budget card, VISA cuts costs by dumping the dual mode EMV/FeliCa IC chip and transaction fees for the convenience of using FeliCa iD/QUICPay payment networks. In other words VISA keeps all transaction fees for themselves while marketing the shit out of VISA Touch as the greatest thing since…whenever.
All of the other card brands in Japan have dual mode NFC as standard. Not VISA, they’re playing the long game of eliminating FeliCa payment network competition. This stupid polarizing single flavor NFC position only served to give QR Code payment networks (PayPay, Line Pay, etc.) a huge opportunity that they smartly played. End result: more payment network competition than ever before.
Apple on the other hand has a very simple rule for all Apple Pay Japanese issue cards: they must support FeliCa and all EMV cards are global NFC dual mode. Was this the price for adding FeliCa support to Apple Pay? Perhaps, I think it’s more to do with the Apple Pay vision of removing complex and confusing hardware choices, the Google Pay Japan mess, for standard ‘just works everywhere’ NFC. Has this been successful? Very...just ask Suica.
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