Called it: Octopus announced NFC A HCE Octopus for Android, an HCE version of PBOC 2.0 which is an EMV clone, i.e. no licensing fees to pay to EMVCo, Octopus rebranding a China T-Union card for Android first to be followed by a long migration away from FeliCa, so no more licensing fees to Sony.
But didn’t former Octopus boss Sunny Cheung pooh-pooh NFC as outdated technology? What he was really doing was dissing FeliCa to make way for PBOC and QR. Some Hong Kong folks were upset when I made the prediction back in 2020 but the direction Octopus was going by joining China T-Union was clear. As for the user experience it should be similar to HCE Navigo on Android: no Express Mode, no Power Reserve, etc., as those features require an Embedded Secure Element (eSE) to work. Octopus says that HCE is necessary because ‘not all smartphones have an eSE’.
Bullshit. All modern NFC Forum certified NFC devices have an eSE and NFC A-B-F functionality built-in. What they really mean is, ‘not all Android devices have an eSE that we can use without paying the manufacturers a ton of money to issue device updates that retroactively update the eSE with PBOC 2.0.’ This is the same problem Navigo faced and the same wobbly solution.
Whatever it is, or isn’t, good luck getting HCE PBOC Octopus on wearables, it will be a craptacular experience if it works at all. A specific problem is that PBOC 2.0 doesn’t always play well with other installed eSE applets (EMV cards, FeliCa cards, etc.), it tends to push all other Express Mode applets aside. Even in the HCE incarnation, PBOC Octopus performance will be less than stellar and not always play nice. HCE is as HCE does.
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