Suica 2.0 related comments and discussions are starting to appear on online forums but there are many mistaken assumptions. The assumption is any transit card system using ‘online’ processing simply does exactly what EMV does: everything from key verification to payment processing happens on a central server. Let’s take a look.
Local + central distributed processing
Have you ever used an EMV prepaid card? EMV prepaid cards suck for various reasons, the biggest one being that it’s hard to quickly see how much balance the card account has at any given moment. And it’s a pain in the butt to add money, especially cash. I had a prepaid au Mastercard, the card was such an inconvenient and lousy user experience compared with Suica that I dumped it. If you want to understand why Singaporeans are so upset with SimplyGo EZ-Link cards, it boils down to suddenly going from instantly knowing how much was on their EZ-Link cards at the gate, to opening an app that might show an updated card account balance in the next few hours. That’s the price of going all in with central processing. Suica 2.0 does not do this.
Suica 2.0 has a distributed local + central approach which moves fare processing from the gates to a central server. That’s it. The exit gate reader still handles local mutual key validation for read-write operations then displays fare deduction with the new card balance. And the average gate transaction speed hit for moving fare processing to the server? According to JR East: 10ms on average, very small because the server processes fares faster than limited memory gates can. While this doesn’t seem like much, it has a lot of benefits: fast processing of complex fares. The first benefit of this is removing Suica regions, and eventually all Transit IC regions.
The second benefit is account based ticketing. This is where ID Port comes in, ID-Port is the account system glue for linking both internal JR East services such as Commute Plans, Green Car Seat Tickets, Day Passes and Shinkansen eTickets, and external services like special discounts, transit coupons, basically any service that can be bundled in an eMoney • transit package, which is a lot. Non-transit services can be linked too: ID-Port has been in the news recently for helping Noto Earthquake evacuees receive aid with Suica cards.
JR East is already offering some ID-PORT powered bundled ticketing but we should be seeing a bigger rollout in the 2024 fiscal year leading up to Eki-Net QR ticket launch in the Tohoku region sometime after October with MaaS bundled ticket packages, fare discount coupons and more.
The stages rollout of the Suica 2.0 platform is expected to by completed by fiscal year 2026, the year that Mobile Suica will mark it’s 20th anniversary. The Tohoku region is already done, Tokyo is being done now, Sendai is next, Niigata will be last.
The future Suica card is already here
With the Suica 2.0 platform is rolling out, Suica card is changing too. The Suica card architecture itself is not changing, but the way the system uses the card, is. Shinkansen eTicket read/write information has already migrated from card to Eki-Net server, it seems reasonable to expect other Suica ‘extras’ like commuter passes, day passes and Green Car Tickets will also migrate to Eki-Net.
There are many benefits for streamlining Suica, flexibility with more features, again thanks to ID-PORT linking different systems and services to the Suica card #ID “account” though JR East will certainly encourage data entry user registration with bigger point rewards and other goodies.
And then there is Mobile Suica for wearables, aka ‘Mobile Suica Lite’ for Fitbit, Garmin, wearOS Pixel Watch, wearOS Galaxy Watch. The stripped down Suica card that loads on these devices is exactly what is illustrated in the 2026 version, a Suica ID # and Stored Fare (SF). No commuter passes, no Green Car Tickets.
I have thought about this limitation for a long time, and have come to the conclusion that it’s not a limitation, it’s the future. The current limitation will be eliminated when those supplemental services migrate from the Suica card to the Eki-Net cloud, just like Shinkansen eTickets have. It also opens up Green Car Tickets, commute plans and day passes to all Transit IC cards registered in Eki-Net, not just Suica.
This is where JR East, and JR West, want to go: stripped down, streamlined cards with ID and SF functions, everything else on the cloud. Whether plastic cards migrate to the same streamlined hardware format or not is anybody’s guess. New FeliCa SD2 cards used for Suica 2 in 1 suggest that full function plastic still has a place, in buses that travel remote areas w/o reliable network service. Plastic cards will always have a place as the basic go to, ‘if you have the card, you have an account because the card is the account’; the perfect solution for people who don’t want to, or can’t register. Suica 2 in 1 automatic regional transit points work, no registration or setup required to earn and use, all just by tapping in and out.
This basic direction however, became clearer this week with a PR release from JR West: ICOCA Web Commuter Pass Service, announced in conjunction with ICOCA rail and bus service extensions in Shikoku. Starting in 2025 customers can order ICOCA commuter passes online and pay with credit cards, or with cash at convenience store ATMs. The service covers plastic and Mobile ICOCA, and includes non-JR West commuter passes. The current version of Mobile ICOCA only issues JR West line commuter passes, the 2025 update will be a big one. This is a very interesting development as JR West is taking on a job that not only eliminates the traditional trek to a local station or bus office to buy a commuter pass, but also eliminates that job for various small transit operators who run on a shoestring budget.
Part of this is JR West addressing a Kansai region specific problem: the failure of PiTiPa. Local operators need a regular Transit IC card for selling commuter passes, ICOCA does that nicely now that JR West has opened up the card for 3rd party passes. Think of it as a Suica + PASMO hybrid. The strategy is very different than what JR East is doing with the Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate Card program which is more focused on building a MaaS foundation for future region focused transit initiatives, but I like both approaches as different approaches all work together thanks to the Transit IC standard. With JR East closing as many ticket offices as possible, we can at least expect a similar commuter pass online purchase service for plastic Suica • Mobile Suica users. It would be great if Suica and PASMO deepened their cooperation into a single online commuter pass service.
What about Suica App?
To quote Steve Jobs, “What about it? It’s dead. Right?” Suica App is not dead but it will likely be reborn as a web based portal like app, just like Eki-Net and JRE POINT. Not pretty but focused on better Suica management by migrating all the ticket services to Eki-Net. One thing JR East desperately needs to update is the Suica Pocket recharge function. It needs to be streamlined and transformed into a simple one tap Mobile Suica 2.0 powered recharge feature that works across all Mobile Suica devices from smartphones to wearables.
JR West hasn’t said anything about ICOCA v2 platform, but it’s easy to see that they are doing what JR East is doing in a different way, and this has lit a fire under JR Central who are finally getting serious about TOICA as a service platform business opportunity instead of a transit card.
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