March is always the month for new train schedules and services and 2024 is no different. JR East will be adding a significant Suica service expansion to 21 stations in the Yamagata region on March 16, the first big expansion since the May 2023 Suica 2.0 rollout in Iwate, Aomori and Akita. Careful examination however reveals the Suica 2.0 rollout has been quietly ongoing. JR East previously indicated the Tokyo Suica region system would be upgraded to Suica 2.0 starting in the summer of 2023, evidence bears this out.
New Suica 2.0 validators have appeared in Tokyo area unmanned rural stations which means the Tokyo Suica region is already using Suica 2.0 central server fare processing outlined below:
The important point to remember is that Suica 2.0 is a staged rollout. Low traffic rural stations using new simplified Suica validators and new region extensions are first, huge high traffic central stations like Shinjuku, Tokyo, Shibuya, Shinagawa, Ueno, Ikebukuro, will be last. The system upgrade will be as boring as the May 2023 Tohoku Suica 2.0 launch. Nobody will notice any difference, it’s the same old Suica. After Yamagata, the next big expansion is Nagano in March 2025.
Another big expansion of a different sort is coming in the 2nd half of fiscal year 2024 (April 1~March 31): QR Eki-Net service will launch in the Tohoku region. Why Tohoku? Because the entire region is Suica 2.0 and Suica 2.0 handles both IC cards and QR. QR?
Yes. Suica 2.0 is an account based fare processing system that handles multiple authentication methods. The account manager glue is ID-Port, the chart outlines what it does and what it handles: Transit IC, QR, Biometric and more. ID Port has been in the news recently, pressed into non-transit service by request from Ishikawa Prefecture to help Noto Earthquake evacuees receive aid while on the move.
The larger picture of Suica 2.0 and Mobile Suica 2.0
The Suica platform is difficult, perhaps impossible, for westerners, especially clueless tech media hacks, to truly understand. They think it’s just a closed loop transit card but Suica is actually a business service platform. As pointed out in an earlier post, there is no western transit system that compares with what JR East is doing with Suica and JRE POINT. Transport for London, Transport for New South Wales and New York MTA are all public transit operations, not businesses.
And because the transit cards they use don’t have business plans attached to them to turn a profit, EMV open loop feels like progress, even though it really isn’t. It’s the same old NFC technology repackaged, marketed and sponsored by card companies as a ticketing service, but they cleverly managed to get their for-profit cards on a public service that they take a cut from.
It’s important to understand the difference between the Suica 2.0 central fare processing system vs Mobile Suica. They are separate things, Mobile Suica only has 2 functions: (1) add or remove a Suica card on smartphone and wearable devices (provisioning), (2) add money to the Suica card from apps (recharge from Wallet apps, point apps, bank apps, etc.). That’s it. Everything else, transit fare and payment reader transactions to and from the card, are processed by the Suica 2.0 system.
The Apple Pay Suica launch in 2016 revitalized Mobile Suica which had stagnated, and set it on a new trajectory. JR East has steadily added new services on the recharge side with Google Pay, Rakuten Pay, au Pay, Mizuho Wallet, Suitto, JRE POINT, and just last week they added NTT Docomo dBARAI (dPAY). They have also steadily added new devices on the provisioning side: Android, iPhone, FitBit, Garmin, wearOS Pixel, wearOS Galaxy.
Multiple ways to recharge Suica, multiple ways to earn and spend points, multiple ways to add and use Suica on a device. The addition of NTT Docomo dBARAI app and dPOINT ecosystem is important and kicks off a new phase. I call the new multiple recharge/provisioning incarnation Mobile Suica 2.0. Expect more point apps and devices to be added. People outside of Japan don’t see the whole business picture because there is nothing out there like it to compare with. Why? It all comes down to mobile.
Compare the Mobile Suica 2.0 app ecosystem to the app ecosystem system of Cubic managed Oyster, Opal, or OMNY. You can’t because none of them have one. They don’t have a mobile platform to build a mobile app ecosystem, and forfeited away any chance to build one to card companies when they signed on for open loop, a tradeoff nobody notices or talks about.
Understanding the importance of Suica on mobile is vital to understanding what JR East is doing: they can only do what they are doing because Suica was the first mobile transit platform, launched in 2006. Everything was in place to leverage the 2016 Apple Pay Japan revolution.
This is exactly what JR East has done, even though it’s not easy to see. Going forward Suica 2.0 will drive more Mobile Suica 2.0 use, and vice versa. ID-Port will link in additional services and transactions, so will the Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate program. It may seem like a bunch of puzzle pieces but the aim of it all is very simple: create and drive as much transaction volume through the Suica system pipe as possible. Just like a credit card company does, but a pipe that JR East owns not EMVCo., top to bottom. Oh, and be a bank too.
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