Spring is always the time for new product announcements in Japan which starts in March. Today, 2025-03-03 marks the day that Apple dropped the FeliCa requirement for payment cards resulting in new card announcements from VISA Japan and their card issuers Revolut, Sony Bank WALLET and MUFJ Debit. These debit cards have been missing from Apple Pay until now because of the Apple requirement that all Japanese issue payments cards be dual mode that support both EMV payment networks and FeliCa payment networks (NTT docomo iD and JCB QUICPay). With that requirement now dropped, VISA JP issuers are free to add payment cards that only support EMV Touch and nothing else: those Wallet cards only show the EMV contactless mark. Another important change is that all dual mode JP Wallet payment cards were issued under iD or QUICPay brands. The new VISA cards are VISA only.
The refreshed VISA JP page theme is clearly celebratory now that VISA has eliminated Japanese payment network competitors from the Apple Pay JP card issue equation. Dual mode Wallet cards will be around for a long time but likely gradually decline in number. EMV contactless is standard now on most POS systems but dual mode is still the best strategy for card issuers to reach the widest possible contactless footprint, and on it costs nothing extra to do on mobile as dual mode EMV/Mobile FeliCa is standard on all Japanese model NFC capable smartphones.
I hope that Japanese banks and merchants see the wisdom of keeping payment network competition in place instead of putting all their contactless payment card eggs in the proverbial EMVCo basket. Actually they already have, why else would we have all those QR Code mobile payment apps?
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