At the end of 2023 this blog feels like it has come full circle. After the pre-Covid surge of inbound visitors searching for Mobile Suica information, traffic crashed and never recovered. With more English language Mobile Suica resources out there on the web and YouTube, there’s not much need for a blog of Suica guides.
There was a lot less interest in mobile payment news this year, and not much news worth writing about either. 2023 trends were put in motion years ago and are simply playing out, like the Japanese mobile payments market consolidation, VISA’s continued block of non-JP issue cards, the open loop push and so on.
Like a lot of recent tech products, very little, in Japan at least, seemed new, exciting…or positive. Tech writing in general has an incredibly short shelf life, perhaps it’s time to move on to better, or at least more constructive topics that people will find interesting or helpful 5 or 10 years from now. On that thought here are the pieces that meant most to me in 2023.
Return of the Dragon is my favorite, perhaps of all time, the piece I’m most proud of. It captures a story I thought should be heard, and it took 3 long hikes to the top of Mt Shichimen to get the pictures and details right. It was worth every step.
Two Funerals. Saying goodbye to one’s parents is hard, saying goodbye to the family that once existed through them is harder. In a similar vein, The long goodbye was saying farewell to a writer whose posts used to be an inspiration that devolved into political melodrama playing loose with the truth or just lying. The world doesn’t need another tech blogger spinmeister.
Final Frontiers was the most important moment mobile transit payments post this year, outlining the Suica 2.0 rollout that launched in May. We won’t see the full results JR East efforts until 2027 but it will very interesting to watch it play out.
On the Apple front it feels like the air has gone out of the Cupertino ballon. Apple Pay did’t show much progress this year, probably because Apple is playing defense instead of offense. Apple Maps Japan continues its glacially slow progress. Not that Japanese customers care much, with iPhone prices at an all time high thanks to the cheap yen, interest in all things Apple is at an all time low.
In other payments 2023 news, VISA continues to squeeze the transit competition, but open loop isn’t where the puck is going, it’s all about points.
Thanks always for reading and best wishes for 2024!
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