Category: NFC-Felica

Thoughts on Suica 2.0

The Suica 2.0 launch in the Tohoku region on May 27 is not simply a launch. It marks the transition to a whole new business model for JR East. The future is Suica as a mobile payment and services platform that leverages JR East transit infrastructure. It has to be because the traditional business model of selling train tickets is declining along with the population of Japan. Fewer people, fewer trains. Lifestyles and work styles are changing too, as expected, but COVID has drastically accelerated societal shifts that planners expected to happen gradually such as doing away with work day commuting and the need for commuter passes.

And there is mobile. The ability of doing things with an app and a credit card instead of having to go to the station ticket office or kiosk has made a lot of station infrastructure irrelevant. Station infrastructure and ticketing systems built for the era of cash based kiosks for paper tickets, commuter passes is redundant in the Mobile Suica era, and maintaining local JR Green Window Ticket Offices in every station is expensive.

For example, long time JR East commuters have witnessed the gradual elimination of paper ticket kiosks in favor of pink Suica recharge kiosks. This is because over 90% of JR East Tokyo area transit users use Suica or PASMO and the reason why there are fewer expensive maintenance heavy IC + paper ticket gates and more inexpensive easy maintenance IC only gates at stations. Are there are more IC Card only exits in rebuilt stations especially with connecting shopping malls.

Sign of the time: IC only gate entrances and disappearing local JR Ticket Offices.

Green Window Ticket Offices are disappearing at a rapid pace too, 70% will be gone by 2025, replaced by Eki-Net online ticketing services and Mobile Suica commuter passes. As YouTuber kenzy201 says, once you migrate to Mobile Suica, you can never go back to plastic. As for those recharge kiosks, private rail operators are removing them and renting out station space to 7-11 ATMs that do the same job, as kenze explains in his video that covers reducing cash oriented station infrastructure.

Open Loop Reality
All of this is taking place while multiple transit companies are testing open loop transit for deployment as a way to increase revenue. One of the issues that people don’t discuss about open loop transit is the lack of integration on a large scale like closed loop Suica. Open Loop doesn’t travel well. When you examine the deployments around the world, it is limited to isolated systems with simple fare structures. That’s why I call the Japanese test installations transit boutiques. It doesn’t integrate well across complex fare structures and multiple transit connected companies. It doesn’t work for reserve seat Shinkansen and express train eTicketing. Complex transit ticket packaging and fare validation speed is where closed loop shines. In real world testing open loop isn’t an improvement over Transit IC. The mix and match transit gate environment, predictably, slows things down. Open Loop has its place in the transit mix, but I believe the return on investment will not live up to expectations.

With the launch of Tohoku Suica 2.0, the Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate cards are fully integrated into the larger JR East transit network.

Integration is the key
The promise of Suica 2.0 boils down to creating a whole new level of integration. The current Transit IC standard is a strong one because it integrates cards across different transit regions with cross compatible eMoney purchasing. The integration of mobile with Suica took it to a whole new level as the world’s first transit payment platform, as did Apple Pay integration in 2016. By moving fare processing to the cloud, Suica 2.0 will integrate isolated Suica regions, integrate new flexible fares and new types of commuter passes while promoting local services in new ways. It will eventually incorporate QR ticketing as well. As cloud based transit IC systems are linked together, the integration will spread beyond JR East. Integration is the only way forward for the Transit IC platforms, Suica, PASMO and ICOCA, to evolve and survive and grow in the mobile era. It’s going to be a very interesting journey.

Related: Final Frontiers: How Suica 2.0 will solve the IC fare barrier problem and much more

A big thank you to Junya Suzuki for taking time to discuss the Suica 2.0 launch on Twitter Space.

Launch Gallery

Suica 2.0 gates at Morioka Station on launch day
Suica 2.0 Tohoku area station validator, out of 45 new Suica equipped stations gone live today, 36 are validators, 9 are gates
Local media report from the launch in Akita.
A trip to Morioka with Suica, interesting station setup with Suica 2.0 validator on the platform (3:10 mark).

iOS 16 Wallet: expanding the Apple Pay experience, aka Suica auto-charge for the rest of us

iOS 15 added big new features to Wallet, expanding digital keys from cars to include home, office and hotels and ID in Wallet driver licenses for the first time. There were smaller but important UI changes too. A new add card screen offered new categories making is easy to add transit cards regardless of the device region and quickly re-add previous Wallet items from iCloud. iOS 15 was all about Wallet to the extent that Apple now advertises it as a separate thing from Apple Pay with a separate web page, and even referred to Apple Pay as “one of the most important areas of Wallet” in the WWDC keynote. Very interesting.

iOS 16 moves the focus back to Apple Pay and making digital payments more useful, practical and universal. The WWDC22 Keynote announced Apple Pay Later, in-app ID card verification and key sharing. Apple Pay Later is one aspect of several new Apple Pay functions unveiled in the What’s new in Apple Pay and Wallet session.

Multi-merchant payments: In our online world we can never be sure how many sub-merchants are involved when we order something and how our card information is shared. In multi-merchant Apple Pay, multiple payment tokens are issued for each merchant in the same transaction, preserving user privacy, with the iOS 16 Apple Pay paysheet showing a breakdown of each sub-merchant charge. This feature works mostly on the backend, but showcases how smartly the Apple Pay Wallet team design features to ‘just work’ securely for merchants and customers.

Automatic Payments
My favorite iOS 16 feature as it addresses a lot of interesting use cases, much more than just Apple Pay Later installments which fall under:

Beck’s Coffee Shop subscription

Reoccurring payments, which include things like installments and subscriptions, basically any regularly scheduled payment. With the recent Starbucks Japan price increases, I decided to sign up for the new JR East Beck’s Coffee Shop subscription plan. Up to 3 cups a day for ¥2,800 a month. A pretty good deal for commuters like me. The Beck’s subscription service is subcontracted out to an interesting online business venture company called Favy that uses Sign in with Apple to create an account. Payment however is manual credit card entry with the onerous, ubiquitous 3D Secure sign-in. Pass issue and serving size selection (M=¥50, L=¥100 extra) is done in Safari. It works well enough, but canceling or getting payment details is a real Safari expedition. It would be a much better, and faster, customer experience doing it all in Apple Pay.

Automatic Reload: this is the real money feature for me because it plays on the classic snag of using Apple Pay Suica…recharge. All pre-paid cards are a catch-22. Japanese users love them because they like the “I know how much money I’m adding to my card” aspect of manual recharge, but there’s the inevitable, you know you forgot about it, bing-bong ‘please recharge’ transit gate alarm when Suica balance is short.

The current incarnation of Apple Pay Suica Auto-Charge is very useful but limited

JR East offers Suica Auto-Charge (auto-reload) as a feature of their VIEW card. The auto-charge option works great with Apple Pay Suica but like all transit card auto-charge, it is tethered to the transit gate NFC system. This means the users gets instant, seamless auto-charge but only on the operator’s transit gates. Suica auto-charge does not work outside of the Suica and PASMO transit gates, not at store terminals, not in other transit card regions like JR West ICOCA. This limitation is a big customer complaint, I and many others would love Apple Pay Suica auto-charge to work everywhere.

Apple Pay automatic reload takes care of this problem very nicely. Suica would recharge anywhere because the card balance ‘trigger’ and reload process is done via Apple Pay and internet connections instead of being tethered to JR East/PASMO transit gates and the Mobile Suica system. JR East could keep auto-charge exclusive to their VIEW cards as they do now but opening it up to all Apple Pay credit cards would greatly increase the usefulness of Suica. JR East could still keep the VIEW advantage with JRE POINT recharge points. Automatic Apple Pay Suica reload would also help alleviate, if not eliminate, the ¥20,000 balance limit problem for most users. The possibilities are are pretty exciting.

Apple Pay order tracking includes QR/barcodes on the Apple Pay sheet, iOS 16 Wallet has a new order tracking icon and dedicated screen

Order tracking
Another very useful feature I think people will love using. The addition of QR/barcodes in the Apple Pay sheet is a first and will greatly shorten the order pickup~delivery process. The best use case of Apple Pay and bar codes that I can think of.

ID verification in apps
This is where ID in Wallet gets real. Wallet app has TSA airport checkpoint verification built-in but that’s not going to help all the government issuing agencies, not to mention software developers, around the world who want to implement digital ID verification to unlock various digital services.

JR East for example has centered their whole Super Suica MaaS Cloud initiative around ID PORT and the ability to match various region or age based services (discounts, special fares, etc.). In other words JR East and their sub-merchant or local government agency want to know where I live and how old I am. This is all provided on the Japanese government My Number digital identity card launching later this year on Android, and Apple Wallet later on. But I don’t want my personal details going everywhere. If the MaaS campaign app or website only needs to know that I live in Tokyo and am over 60, that’s the only info I want to give them. This is what the new PassKit ID request APIs in iOS 16 do: give apps only the information they need to perform a verification for a service and nothing more.

Key sharing
Nothing big here, but it does address one iOS 15 Wallet shortcoming for home, hotel keys which that could not be shared and expanded share options beyond mail and messages. I’m doubtful Apple includes office keys in the bargain but the fine print reads: available on participating car brands and access properties. We’ll find out when iOS 16 ships.

And then there’s Tap to Pay on iPhone. It’s really not an Apple Pay function to me because it turns iPhone into a very handy and portable NFC payment terminal, but it makes sense branding wise. Just say Apple Pay for making…and accepting payments. Anywhere the merchant has their payment provider POS app and a network connection, they are ready to go. This is big. Apple has lined up an impressive number payment providers in a very short time who are happy to leave all the hardware certification and secure element management to Apple and focus on software. I can practically feel the intense interest from Japan where local payment providers would love to leverage the global NFC capable iPhone for seamless EMV and FeliCa payment services. It could be an interesting Apple Pay year.

Timeout: a very long transit card transit

Atami station Suica and TOICA exit gates
Maibara station TOICA exit gate

It’s been a year since JR Central’s TOICA network was expanded to more stations making Suica-TOICA-ICOCA cross region commuter passes available for the very first time. Regular transit cards are still stuck with tapping out of one fare region and tapping in at fare region border stations in Atami (Suica~TOICA) and Maibara (TOICA~ICOCA). But even for regular transit cards, crossing IC fare regions is much easier thanks to special IC fare region specific exit gates installed with the TOICA expansion.

Transit YouTuber Wataru Watanuki took the fare region border crossing challenge with a 10 hour trip by regular trains from Tokyo to Osaka using his Suica card. A 556.4 kilometer trip. Try that with a transit card in any other country.

He could have used his Apple Pay Suica but used plastic Suica because it’s easier to get detailed Suica receipt printouts at mobile-unfriendly JR West station kiosks. In his video there are two IC fare region border crossings, one at Atami station from Suica to TOICA and one at Maibara station from TOICA to ICOCA. It’s a leisurely fun train travel video similar to videos that investigate transit IC fare loopholes.

Things would have gone smoothly for Wataru san but he was tripped up by a little known stingy TOICA tap-timeout rule, rumored to be within 3 hours from tap in before the card is invalidated for the trip and has to be reset by a station agent. There is no way to travel from Atami to Maibara by regular train in 3 hours, the shortest travel time is 5 hours 44 minutes, 3 hours barely gets one to Hamamatsu. JR Central supposedly does this to prevent ICOCA card abuse (Really? I suspect they just make it inconvenient so people ditch local trains and ride the Tokaido Shinkansen instead). JR East Suica appears to have much more lax timeout rules. JR West ICOCA limits IC transit on their regular lines to 200 km, though there are some interesting ICOCA loopholes.

Long distance travel with Suica and other IC transit cards isn’t a problem, any regular person would just take the Shinkansen using smartEX or Eki-Net Shinkansen eTickets. Timeout doesn’t apply because the IC card SF balance ‘taps out’ when going through the Shinkansen entrance gate. But the video does point out a long standing weakness of Japanese transit IC fare systems: it’s a hassle for people living in fare region border areas and prevents them from using transit IC cards for local area cross border transit.

One example is the JR Central Minobu line. It does not have transit IC service yet because the line starts at JR East Suica region Kofu station. Suica users from Tokyo can only go as far as Kofu before switching to paper tickets for the Minobu line transfer.

The best thing would be JR East and JR Central cooperating so that IC fare tables work both ways and integrate for cheaper through IC fares instead of 2 separate trips. Most Minobu line stations are unmanned, the trains already equipped with paper ticket fare boxes at the front door exit. Adding a IC card reader is the next logical step and work exactly like buses and some JR West ICOCA equipped train lines do: tap in at the entrance, tap out at the exit. Small improvements would like this would go a long way to solve cross border IC card hassles and make transit easier for local residents. Transit cards only become useful when they integrate with everything from transit to purchases, that in turn, encourages mobile for transit use.

Google Pay PASMO

Notice: Google Pay PASMO launched 2022-09-28 (with some limitations)

Google Pay added Suica with a burst of fanfare in May 2018 that quickly soured when it became clear that Google Pay in Japan was just another Osaifu Keitai flavor. This was a year and a half after the highly successful launch of Apple Pay Suica that pretty much changed everything.

Mobile PASMO for Android Osaifu Keitai launched March 2020 followed by Apple Pay PASMO in October 2020, over a year later still no Google Pay PASMO. What’s the holdup? Does anybody really care at this point?

In short, 2021 was a very rough year for Google Pay. Nevertheless there are signs of new Google Pay services coming to Japan. For Wear OS the answer is definitely yes, for Android, maybe. Wear OS beta code strings referencing Google Pay Suica support appeared in late 2021. Today there was a reader tip of a “SERVICE_PROVIDER_PASMO” code reference in Google Play services v22.02.20 APK. Taken together it’s pretty clear that we’ll see PASMO coming to Google Pay and Suica expanding to Google Pay on Wear OS.

Timing wise the magic season for new service launches in Japan is March-April-May. They should launch together, it also makes sense for PASMO to land on both Android and Wear OS alongside Suica. The big question is whether Google Pay PASMO on Android will have the same Osaifu Keitai device restrictions that Suica has, or not.

This is why the Wear OS support angle interests me most. We’ve seen Mobile Suica expand to Garmin and Fitbit without using any Android Osaifu Keitai software. If Suica, and PASMO, on Wear OS uses the same playbook, it will mean much wider support on the growing number of smart wearable devices.

Which brings us back to Android. If Google Pay Wear OS doesn’t need Osaifu Keitai software to work, when will Google Pay on Android also cut the Osaifu Keitai cord?

2022-07-19 Update
The latest Google Play APK now includes PASMO artwork

The Suica 2 in 1 mobile dilemma: promoting targeted region services on a wide mobile platform

Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate Transit Cards have a problem: it would be great to have these cards available on mobile wallet platforms (Osaifu Keitai, Apple Pay, etc.) however, the whole point of region cards is to promote region affiliate transit companies and service benefits for the people who live there. There are region affiliate transit points and services for everybody, discounts and point rebates for elderly and disabled users, commute plans and so on, subsidized by prefectural and local city governments.

Hence despite the Suica logo on them, region affiliate cards are not available from JR East. They are only available from region affiliate bus offices. But it’s a pain getting them, commute plan renewal requires another trip to the bus office and cash recharge is the only option. Suica 2 in 1 would be infinitely more useful and user friendly on mobile. Region affiliate users are certainly happy to have a card that covers all of their transit needs but it doesn’t bring them into the Mobile Suica era.

But mobile is a two edged sword. On one hand you want the convenience of Mobile Suica, on the other hand region cards need to promote subsidized services for a particular location, keeping them local on a wide mobile platform and restricting access for special services with certain eligibility requirements (local disabled and elderly residents) is a challenge. How does one promote targeted regional services on widely available mobile platforms like Mobile Suica on Apple Pay?

The Suica App mobile fix
Hmmm, this sounds like a similar problem with student commuter passes. JR East and customers want to do away with the drudgery of going to the local JR East station ticket window to confirm student ID validity, nevertheless, student ID validity must be confirmed before a student commuter pass can be purchased. Mobile Suica has supported student commuter passes but students have to go to a local JR East office to validate and activate it.

Mobile Suica will address this problem on February 13 with a system update and new version of Suica App (v3.1.0) that adds support for in-app purchasing and renewing student commute plans. Another Mobile Suica update on March 12 will add Tokyo region day pass purchase support. Think of these as selective local services on a widely available mobile platform. Let’s see how this approach can be applied to Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate cards.

1) Region affiliate mobile issue
When I made my Apple Wallet transit card wish list mockup, I thought it might be nice to have all the new Suica 2 in 1 cards available directly in Wallet app along with Mobile ICOCA (coming in 2023).

JP transit card Wallet app mockup
Wallet supports direct adding for regular WAON cards
But WAON specialty cards can only be added via WAON app

In reality, it’s not a good idea to make region affiliate transit cards available to every Wallet app user. Transit cards are easier to add in iOS 15 Wallet app than ever before, but not delete and get a refund. Too many choices confuse users who may be new to Apple Pay. What if a user wanted to add a regular Suica but added totra Suica or nolbé Suica by mistake?

Apple Pay WAON deals with this problem in a smart way: regular WAON can be added directly in Wallet app, regional WAON cards are added to Wallet with WAON app. The beauty of issuing specialty WAON cards in the app is they have region specific goodies attached: a portion of the region WAON card transaction goes to a local government development fund.

This approach is a perfect fit for region affiliate Suica cards on mobile with local perks, bonus local transit points and so on when issuing cards on mobile.

2) Suica 2 in 1 commuter pass purchases and limited eligibility card issue
There are a few more hurdles to clear before Suica 2 in 1 can join the mobile era: region affiliate commute plan purchase and renewal, limited eligibility card issue (for elder and disabled users).

Let’s say you are a totra commuter who rides a region affiliate bus and a JR East train. In this case you need 2 separate commute plans on your Suica 2 in 1 totra card, one for the region affiliate bus, one for JR East. The commuters plans must be purchased separately: the region affliliate commuter pass is bought at the bus office, the JR East section is then purchased added at a JR East station ticket office. It’s a complex hassle. JR East stations are all cashless but only a few region affiliate bus offices take credit cards…and so it goes. How nice it would be to do this with an app and pay with Apple Pay.

Mobile Suica already hosts this kind of complex commute plan configuration but not in Suica App. Mobile PASMO and PASMO App are hosted on the JR East system, basically rebranded Mobile Suica, and easily configure complex bus + train commute plans from multiple transit operators for mobile purchase.

This leaves limited eligibility card issue. The February 13 Mobile Suica update adds student commuter pass pre-registration and ID verification uploading via the Mobile Suica member website. The student reservers a pass entering school information, commute route and uploads a picture of their school ID. Approved student commuter pass reservations are then purchased in Suica App. This ID verification method can be used for issuing elder and disabled Suica 2 in 1 cards. It’s still a manual authentication process that digital My Number cards will, hopefully, transform into a simple automatic one with instant verification of necessary personal information.

Student commuter pass preregistration on the Mobile Suica members website, approved passes are purchased in Suica App

One of the really interesting things about Suica 2 in 1 is that the next generation format is the very first Suica card that supports disability fares. Up until now disability fare users have been limited to paper passes inspected at manned transit gates.

JR East plans to drastically reduce the number of manned transit gate areas. Before this happens, mobile support for all Suica cards of every kind, especially the new Suica 2 in 1 features, must be in place. The pieces of the solution are there, it only a matter of JR East integrating them into a Mobile Suica system and Suica App update.

One Suica App to rule them all
If we are promoting region affiliate Suica cards does it make sense to do it all in Suica App or have individually branded local apps for totra, nolbé, cherica, et al? One main goal of Suica 2 in 1 is cost reduction and infrastructure sharing. Despite all the different names and card artwork these are Suica cards with all the Suica benefits and JR East managing the Suica infrastructure for region affiliates.

I’d argue it doesn’t make sense nor does it fit with cost reduction goals to do a bunch of re-skinned local Suica Apps when JR East is making a bunch of replicas. Better to focus efforts on making Suica App a streamlined easy to use app with all the necessary tools for managing mobile region affiliate cards. And because physical cards remain an important part of the Suica platform strategy, Suica App must also add a physical card iPhone recharge feature similar to what Octopus App and Navigo App offer.

All in all I expect that 2023, which will see the launch of the highly anticipated JR West Mobile ICOCA service, will be a big year for Mobile Suica and Suica App too.