Category: Apple

Super Suica 2 in 1 Region Cards

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.

RegionTypeAnnouncedLaunchPartners
UtsunomiyaBus & Light Rail2019-7-9March 2021 (Bus)
March 2022 (Rail)		Kanto Transportation
JR Bus Kanto
Utsunomiya Light Rail
Iwate PrefectureBus2020-1-16March 2021Iwate Kotsu Co. Ltd.
Iwate PrefectureBus2020-10-20March 2021Northern Iwate Transportation
Hachinohe CityBus2020-10-21March 2022Northern Iwate Transportation
Hachinohe City Bus
Aomori CityBus2020-11-19March 2022Aomori City Bus
Akita CityBus2020-11-30March 2022Akita 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

SEIYU Stores finally add NFC payment support for Apple Pay Suica • PASMO

That didn’t take long. The announcement Walmart was selling majority control of SEIYU over to KKR and Rakuten was made November 16. And what was the first new management move? Adding Suica and Transit IC payment support which means Apple Pay Suica • PASMO and Google Pay Suica can finally, finally be used for paying at checkout. QR Code PayPay has been in place for awhile already. SEIYU also rolled out a new system recently for self checkout and EMV IC chip payments for SEIYU brand Saison cards (other cards have to be signed…yuck). NFC anything has been entirely missing from the SEIYU payments lineup despite the COVID crisis and a huge push for all things cashless, but Walmart has a long antagonistic history with NFC digital wallet payments.

I only noticed the change this evening when I heard the store announcement over the PA. Sure enough Suica signs were plastered at every checkout. It’s weird but somehow fitting that SEIYU is soft launching long overdue NFC contactless payments with Suica. More will come. I’m sure Walmart leaving town had nothing to do with it. Yeah, nothing at all. SEIYU stores were much better under the pre-Walmart Seibu management. Hopefully this marks a return to better service and clean modern stores.

VISA Japan finally signs on with Apple Pay (Updated)

UPDATE 11/24
Apple pulled the Apple Pay VISA JP rollout, somebody in Cupertino uploaded a new JSON payload to Apple Pay servers too soon. After showing in Wallet for almost 24 hours, VISA disappeared from the add card animation lineup around 6 pm JST. With a gaff this long at least we know VISA support is coming to Apple Pay Japan soon and likely come with the Line Pay Apple Pay card announced in September for launch ‘later this year’. I’m leaving the original post below for now and put put a new post with the official launch.

Japanese credit card otaku tweeted late last night that the Apple Pay Wallet animation started displaying VISA, which it never did until now. Sure enough, VISA displays in the add card animation for the Apple Pay Japan region on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad. Wallet only displays supported card brands for the selected Apple Pay region so the change means VISA JP is officially on board.

The trouble is we don’t know what that means without a press release from VISA Japan, Apple, or Japanese card issuers. So far we don’t have one. All we have are 2 questions that will hopefully be answered later today or the next few days.

Does it mean current iD/QUICPay VISA cards in Wallet fully support Apple Pay features?
A quick check adding a digital Kyash VISA prepaid card to my Wallet did not show anything new, just the same limitations: no VISA logo, no In App (Suica recharge) or web purchase support, no EMV/FeliCa dual mode. That doesn’t mean anything by itself: virtual Kyash VISA still has the limitations but it may be different for major VISA issuers like SMBC and MUFJ.

Does it mean that Apple Pay is simply matching the EMV only VISA Touch cards already on Google Pay from Sony Bank and others?
This seems more likely but also flies in the face of Apple Pay Japan encouraging ‘it just works anywhere’ dual mode EMV/FeliCa support for Wallet issue. If we don’t get announcements from VISA Japan or Apple, it could be a slow dribble of VISA Touch announcements from VISA JP card issuers, not much fun.

What I really want to know is: did VISA Japan blink, or Apple? I’ll update this post as details come in.

VISA Touch issuers currently on Google Pay

VISA Touch Transit Boutiques

VISA Japan announced VISA Touch support on Kyoto Tango Railway, most media outlets simply ran edited versions of the VISA Japan press release. The infrastructure uses a slightly modified stera store reader platform, which VISA has a hand in. Willer Inc. is hailing this as the first ‘VISA Touch’ solution on Japanese train systems but they ignored the fact that stera VISA Touch was already announced for Ibaraki Transit highway bus service back in July.

Japanese journalist comments on Twitter were fun to read with the ‘let’s just dump FeliCa and Suica already and go all in with EMV’ supporters club checking in as usual. Nobi Hayashi asked good questions regarding real user convenience. Junya Suzuki said he plans a trip to investigate the new service, his next ‘Pay Attention’ column promises to be a good read.

Just what kind of end user are these VISA Touch transit installations targeting anyway? Let’s do a quick profile:

  1. VISA Touch JP plastic cards are being issued in Japan but they are new and few and dwarfed by the number of Transit IC cards (Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, etc.) that can be bought by anybody at any station kiosk machine with cash. Apple Pay Japan users cannot use it because VISA JP refuses to support Apple Pay JP FeliCa/EMV dual mode NFC switching. This service is not targeted for domestic transit users.
  2. Both of these VISA Touch installation transit areas market heavily to inbound tourists, neither of them support Transit IC cards.
  3. VISA Touch is not compatible with PBOC Union Pay cards technology, the installations also support QR Code AliPay and WeChat Pay for inbound Chinese tourists

The short summary is these installations are for inbound tourists with VISA Touch contactless credit cards, a transit boutique for marketing purposes more than real use.

Japanese media is quick to dismiss FeliCa as a technical failure in the face of EMV but I think that is the wrong analysis. Looking back it’s easy to see a huge mistake was that the big push for Mobile FeliCa credit cards on smartphones was not matched with an equally big push for plastic credit cards with FeliCa support.

And the big EMV push instead of FeliCa has not worked out so great either. Instead of making a technology agnostic unified push for NFC contactless, EMV bank card interests pushed their own agenda. All that did was provide a big opening for domestic QR Code payment players like Line Pay and Pay Pay which they took and continue to take.

What I find fascinating is that the mainstream Japanese IT media has not written much about the Super Suica 2 in 1 card strategy or rollout plans. Low cost transit IC card infrastructure sharing that delivers consistent and seamless transit service on mobile and legacy plastic while offering local area branding and services is a compelling vision that I don’t see bank card companies matching.

The challenge for JR group companies (JR West, JR Central, JR Kyushu, etc.) is working with JR East to offer Super Suica 2 in 1 card solutions in their own regions, because if they do not we’ll see more VISA Touch transit boutiques.

Super Suica 2 in 1 cards announced for Aomori and Akita City buses (Updated)

Super Suica diagram

Another day, another JR East Super Suica 2 in 1 card announcement, this one for Aomori City buses due to launch in spring 2022, just about the same time as Mobile ICOCA. This is the 3rd and 4th Super Suica 2 in 1 card announcement so far:

The latest announcements are similar to earlier press releases but there are some interesting new details that shed more light on what the Super Suica service will look like.

  • Local Branding: Super Suica 2 in 1 local area cards will have their own branding and reward points. I suspect local reward points can be exchanged for or plug into the JRE POINT system 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 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 this in a later 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 those orphaned areas 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.

UPDATE
Super Suica 2 in 1 card announced for Akita City buses on November 30.