
JR East Super Suica 2 in 1 card announcements are coming regularly. Instead of separate posts I’m listing all cards here and will update the table as new cards are announced.
2 in 1 Region Card List
As of November 30, 2020, we have 6 Super Suica 2 in 1 Region Cards.
Region | Type | Announced | Launch | Partners | |
Utsunomiya | Bus & Light Rail | 2019-7-9 | March 2021 (Bus) March 2022 (Rail) | Kanto Transportation JR Bus Kanto Utsunomiya Light Rail | |
Iwate Prefecture | Bus | 2020-1-16 | March 2021 | Iwate Kotsu Co. Ltd. | |
Iwate Prefecture | Bus | 2020-10-20 | March 2021 | Northern Iwate Transportation | |
Hachinohe City | Bus | 2020-10-21 | March 2022 | Northern Iwate Transportation Hachinohe City Bus | |
Aomori City | Bus | 2020-11-19 | March 2022 | Aomori City Bus | |
Akita City | Bus | 2020-11-30 | March 2022 | Akita Chuo Kotsu Co. Ltd. |
Details are spare but from the announcements so far we can expect:
- Local Branding: Super Suica 2 in 1 Region cards will have their own branding, commuter passes and reward points. I suspect local reward points can be exchanged with JRE POINT as well. There will also likely be special services and discounts for local area residents linked to Ny Number Card.
- Suica benefits: Though they have different branding, local region 2 in 1 cards are Suica cards with all the Suica infrastructure benefits including Mobile Suica, Shinkansen eTickets, Transit IC compatibility, eMoney, etc.
- Contactless: eliminating paper tickets and hard cash in areas without Transit IC cards in the COVID era is a good thing though credit card companies are marketing the hell out of it too. More on the subject in a this post.
Super Suica offers the benefits of Suica infrastructure to local transit agencies within the JR East area who don’t have the resources to launch or maintain their own Transit IC card system. Plugging orphaned regions into the wider transit network with the same infrastructure is the sensible thing to do, I wish JR East had done this years ago. We should see more announcements in the coming months and Japanese press coverage as the first services prepare to launch in March 2021.
Related Posts
• Road to Super Suica: cloud integration and the transit card push to mobile
• Road to Super Suica: 2 in 1 shared infrastructure and mobile transit card expansion update
•Smells like Super Suica: next generation FeliCa