Tag: Apple Pay Japan

Move Suica and other transit or e-Money cards to new iPhone (updated for iOS 17)

Apple Pay transit cards (Suica, PASMO, and ICOCA) and e-Money cards (WAON and nanaco) are different from Apple Pay payment cards in that a transit or e-Money card prepaid stored value, the card balance, is stored locally on the card itself and can only exist on a single device. Apple Pay credit/debit cards coexist simultaneously on multiple devices, not Suica, PASMO, ICOCA and other transit cards like Octopus, Clipper, SmarTrip, TAP, or e-Money cards like nanaco and WAON.

These stored value cards have to be removed from the old iPhone first, then transferred to the new iPhone. There are 2 ways to transfer cards: automatic transfer with iOS 17 Setup Assistant and manual transfer with Wallet app.

Automatic card transfer with iOS 17 Quick Start Setup Assistant
Quick Start device to device data transfer is the best way to setup a new iPhone, and iOS 17 Set Assistant now automatically transfers all payment, transit and e-Money cards from the old iPhone to the new iPhone. It is very easy to do and highly recommended.

The Apple support page Add a Suica, PASMO, or ICOCA card to Apple Wallet is updated for iOS 17 and covers moving cards in the Transfer your transit Suica, PASMO, or ICOCA card between devices section.

Place the previous iPhone near the new iPhone. iOS 17 Setup Assistant has a new Wallet section that lets you select Wallet cards to transfer in the ‘Make This Your New iPhone’ splash screen. Either select the Wallet items you want to transfer or just leave it all up to Set Assistant. Setup Assistant automatically transfers Wallet items to the new iPhone. As always, make sure all devices have a good internet connection.

The Suica 2 step: manual card transfer in Wallet app
Users can do the traditional Suica 2 step of manually removing cards from the previous iPhone Wallet app before adding them in the new iPhone Wallet app.

Step 1: Remove Suica from Wallet on the previous iPhone
On the old iPhone go to Wallet > tap Suica or other transit card > tap ‘More’ ˚˚˚ in the upper right corner > scroll to the bottom > tap Remove This Card. Don’t worry, this does not delete the card. Apple Pay automatically migrates and safely stores the card on Apple Pay iCloud for you.

  • Step 2: Add card in Wallet on the new iPhone
    On the new iPhone make sure you are signed in with the same Apple ID, open Wallet and tap Add Card “+”
    Tap Previous Cards > confirm the Suica or transit card you want to add is selected > tap Continue
    The registered card name and balance will be showing in the Add Card screen
    Tap Next to add the card to Wallet or tap Add This Card to Wallet Later to cancel
Tap Previous Cards
Confirm and tap Continue
Tap Next to re-add card to Wallet
  • Transfer Suica from previous Apple Watch to new Apple Watch
    Apple Watch Suica users upgrading to a new Apple Watch is easy with watchOS 10. From the Set up your Apple Watch • Set up as new or restore from a backup section: If you’ve set up another Apple Watch with your current iPhone, a screen appears that says Make This Your New Apple Watch. Tap Apps & Data and Settings to see how Express Setup will configure your new watch. Then tap Continue. If you want to choose how your new watch is set up, tap Customize Settings. Then choose a backup from another previous Apple Watch to restore.
  • You can also add cards manually in Wallet as outlined in the previous iPhone section.

What about Suica App and other card apps?

If your Suica, PASMO, ICOCA or e-Money card is registered in the coressponding app, your account and password information will migrate to the new device like any regular iOS app when using device to device data transfer. The apps will automatically pick up the card information from Wallet but you will need to login to access the card app account. If you deleted the app before device to device data transfer, you will need to manually enter account and password information to login when re-adding the app. See the Suica App and PASMO App guide for account setup details.

e-Money card apps ask for the Japanese mobile number used for registering the card in the app and send a verification code via SMS.

Troubleshooting

Wiped old iPhone before setting up new iPhone
If you wiped the old iPhone before setting up a new one and cannot find your previous Suica Wallet card see: Recover Suica • PASMO and e-Money cards from a lost or wiped iPhone. Other topics can be found on the Apple Pay Suica • PASMO Guide.

Robust network connection is extremely important!
Make sure iPhone has a good WiFi or 4G/5G network connection and confirm you are outside of the 2am~4am JST Mobile Suica • Mobile PASMO system maintenance window. Do not use free WiFi or carrier auto-connect WiFi, they are notoriously unreliable. Don’t worry about losing your card SF account balance or commute plan information. Apple Pay iCloud and the Suica • PASMO systems preserve all of your card information. Just make sure that you are signed in with the same Apple ID on your new iPhone and Apple Pay is turned on. Remember that even a good WiFi network connection can quickly bog down when setting up a new iPhone, make sure you have a clean connection when adding Wallet cards.

Suica, PASMO, ICOCA card ID number changes
The Suica or PASMO card ID number may change when transferred to a new iPhone or Apple Watch Wallet. Linked services like EX App (smartEX and Express Reservation), Touch and Go Shinkansen and JR East Ekinet Shinkansen eTickets stop working when the Suica, PASMO, ICOCA ID number changes and users must manually update information with each linked service account to re-link services with the new ID #. For Suica and PASMO getting full ID number requires a transit card issuer app such as Suica or PASMO app, ICOCA displays the full ID number in Wallet card details.

Transferring Suica • PASMO to new iPhone with Wallet app

What’s the difference between Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco?

I always like Sachiko Watatani’s articles, she always has practical insights other journalists seem to miss. Her quick review of Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco is no exception. As a long time user of WAON and nanaco on Osaifu Keitai, both feature phone and Android, the additions of WAON and nanaco to the Apple Pay Japan e-Money lineup completes it enough for her to migrate to iPhone for daily use. On the face of it both cards are almost exactly alike, they work the same and have the same ¥50,000 balance limit. Wanatani san explains the differences.

Transferring a standard rainbow nanaco card and creating a new WAON in Wallet is a breeze. Creating WAON requires adding a minimum balance of ¥1,000, however one of the nice things about doing it with WAON app is you can create a ¥0 balance card, same for nanaco app.

nanaco transfernanaco creationWAON transferWAON creation
Wallet AppYes (standard rainbow cards)NoYes (Blue, GG, YuYu cards)Yes (Blue only)
iOS AppsNoYes (standard rainbow card)NoYes (Blue and custom region cards)

WAON has the most options and no sign-up Wallet creation. A unique WAON app feature is custom region WAON cards, AEON donates part of the transaction purchase to the selected region of the card. There are 159 varieties of custom region WAON. The unique feature of nanaco app is card migration from Android to iPhone. It’s a oneway migration. Watatani san makes the same observation I did yesterday that a nice feature of nanaco card in Wallet is that is displays both balance and points saving users a trip to an outside app.

The big feature for both cards is the Apple Pay recharge backend. VISA brand is the odd man out, again, but mastercard, JCB and American Express credit/debit cards are all good. Users can also set auto-charge options using Seven Card in nanaco app and AEON cards in WAON app. Watatani san is the only review to mention the very unique feature of Apple Pay WAON: parents can setup a WAON card using the Apple Watch family setup option and recharge a child’s WAON card remotely via Messages.

Ignore NFC reader logos, advice for using Apple Pay in Japan

After the October 21 launch of Apple Pay WAON and Apple Pay nanaco e-Money cards, I updated my Apple Pay Japan chart. All I did was add WAON and nanaco logos to the official payment logos listed on the Apple Pay JP page (still not updated as of November 19):

After posting the update chart a reader asked a very good question: why not add the FeliCa reader logo as that is what you’ll often see on NFC readers in Japan. To which I say: ignore reader logos in Japan. Why? Because the reader physical compatibility mark that indicates the antenna location has nothing to do with what payments actually work at checkout. Apple isn’t doing anybody a favor listing the EMV logo in the Apple Pay Japan lineup. It only confuses users.

Let’s play that game again, the ‘which logo is the official NFC logo’ game. Choose:

The correct answer is #2, the NFC Forum logo. The reader physical compatibility mark for EMV is #1, FeliCa is #3. But you never see the NFC Forum logo on NFC readers, what you see is usually something like this:

The EMV mark on the reader tap area does not mean the store accepts EMV contactless…always check the payment acceptance marks.

The Panasonic reader shown above has both EMV and FeliCa logos on the tap area. The store has also attached a card that displays what payments are accepted, in this case both EMV (VISA, mastercard) and FeliCa (iD, Suica•PASMO, WAON, nanaco) are accepted. Looks good right? Not really. The EMV and FeliCa marks are the physical compatibility mark that indicate the antenna location. However, most people assume the physical compatibility mark mean the reader works for all payments…which it does not. Some stores with an EMV physical compatibility marked reader don’t support EMV, and vice versa: FeliCa is supported on the reader but not the POS checkout.

What to do? Let’s see…the NFC Forum is responsible for basic certification of all NFC devices so let’s put their logo on reader instead. Oh wait, can’t do that because people will think it’s a Nespresso machine instead of an NFC reader:

This slide says it all regarding NFC Forum efforts as an industry promotion org

Time for a new NFC logo.

It might seem like a good idea to separate NFC hardware from the payment services that run on top of the hardware. The reality is, it’s impossible to do because all-in-one NFC chips do it all. The NFC Forum could spend a ton of money creating a new NFC logo that can be used everywhere…but what’s the point? Nobody will use it even if they do.

NFC readers come in all kind of shapes and sizes for all kinds of end uses, from supermarket checkout, to transit gates, and vending machines, and much more. If nothing else remember this: the physical compatibility mark is there to indicate the antenna location and show you where to tap, that’s all it’s there for. It can be anything. It should match the service it’s intended to fulfill.

WAON and nanaco coming to Apple Pay

UPDATE: WAON and nanaco will launch on Apple Pay October 21 JST

Two of the last big three Apple Pay Japan holdouts are finally coming: AEON announced WAON and Seven & i Holdings announced nanaco for ‘later this year’. These popular prepaid eMoney FeliCa cards have been on Osaifu Keitai and Google Pay for some time. This leaves Rakuten Edy as the last, and largest, Wallet holdout although the iOS Rakuten Edy app recently received an update that supports Apple Pay for physical card recharge.

Despite the uptake of QR Code payment apps such as PayPay, prepaid eMoney cards remain popular and getting them on Apple Pay is an important development. The cards are also more secure: Seven & i Holdings experienced a huge embarrassment when they launched their 7pay QR Code payment service in 2019 that quickly failed due to a security meltdown. Since that disaster they have refocused on nanaco as their in-store payment + loyalty point reward strategy. Currently nanaco has issued 74 million cards, WAON has issued 87 million cards. For comparison Suica has issued 84 million plastic cards and over 14 million Mobile Suica digital cards that includes Apple Pay Suica.

Release details are sparse but it’s safe to assume they are coming after iOS 15 ships (probably 15.1). iOS 15 Wallet includes UI improvements that remove the confusing device region setting requirement and simplify adding transit cards like Suica and non-bank stored value (SV) prepaid cards like WAON and nanaco. As pointed out many times before, all iPhone 8 • Apple Watch 3 and later models support Apple Pay Japan cards thanks to Apple’s global NFC support. The big questions are: (1) Is direct Wallet add card supported that bypasses creating a WAON or nanaco account as part of the digital card issue process on Google Pay? (2) Can physical cards be transferred like Suica and PASMO? None of this is supported on Android.

These and other usability issues have kept these cards from joining Apple Pay. It will be interesting to see if Apple has solved them and persuaded AEON • Seven & i to simplify their digital card issue process to follow the great example set by Apple Pay Suica because that is the high bar: direct Wallet adding with no sign up and open ended Apple Pay recharge. The low bar is the Toyota Wallet app-like model of chaining card issue and recharge functions to a user account app. The cards should support Express Mode as they do for Mobile WAON and Mobile nanaco on Android. The press release Apple Pay WAON image suggests Express Mode, the Apple Pay nanaco image does not, however the dual press announcement does suggest a level of commitment and integration on the Apple Pay side. We’ll see.

Not many of new iOS 15 Wallet goodies announced at WWDC will come to Japan soon with the exception of digital car keys, adding WAON and nanaco now is a smart move that will keep users happy. With all the card possibilities coming to Japan this year, it’s a good thing that iOS 15 ups the Wallet card max limit to 16.

iOS 15 Wallet UI simplifies the addition process for transit cards and makes it easy to add a new category for stored value eMoney cards.

The Weekly #3

August 3, 2021

Busy week for Apple Pay and Mobile FeliCa

Since last week’s Australian Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services hearings regarding the so called Apple Pay monopoly and the pointless debate of Android only Host Card Emulation (HCE) ‘virtual secure element’ vs. a hardware embedded secure element (eSE), Apple has been busy rolling out new Apple Pay Wallet services: Australian health insurance Wallet card support and digital vaccination certificates, ING Belgium and FNB South Africa additions, and today’s Student ID expansion to more universities in America including the first international addition in Canada. The last item was particularly interesting as Apple issued a press release that included new partners beyond Blackboard: Transact, CBORD, TouchNet, Atrium, HID Global, and Allegion. MIFARE and FeliCa are the 2 big protocols used for ID cards, both fully supported in iPhone and Apple Watch. Hopefully we’ll see more international Student ID card support going forward.

Japanese IT reporters have been writing about the recent addition of Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 JE (Japan Edition) to the KDDI au lineup. All the Chinese manufacturers have been bringing new models with Mobile FeliCa Osaifu Keitai support as more or less standard, but like most Android smartphones including Google Pixel, even though the hardware is the same everywhere, Mobile FeliCa is only activated for Japanese models.

The Xiaomi product manager interview casually mentions that only 20% or so of Android Osaifu Keitai device holders actually use the feature. Why bother adding it then? I suspect Osaifu Keitai usage rates vary widely depending on the region, much higher for Tokyo and other metro areas, less in rural areas. It would be really interesting to compare Osaifu Keitai usage rates with Apple Pay as I also suspect Apple Pay Japan usage rates likely leave Osaifu Keitai in the dust. As for the real reason why Chinese smartphones manufacturers are adding Mobile FeliCa support: the digital My Number ID card launching in 2022 requires it. One out of ten people living in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas is a Chinese national…do the math.

Digital My Number: First Summary Toward the Realization of Electronic Certificates for Smartphones

Delete me

The American bred internet cancel culture that started during the Obama years and went ballistic during the Trump years shows no signs of abating as battle lines are constantly redrawn to silence a somebody that somebody else wants silenced. And it has become an entrenched issue thanks to AI driven SNS content. As Tim Pool adroitly points out, and long term surveys confirm, the current American racial crisis didn’t happen until the Reddit and YouTube generation raised on endlessly looping AI driven police brutality video content came of age perceiving their virtual world as the real one. That’s the unfolding tragedy as perceptions based on virtual life replace real ones.

As bad as this is, evil players and big tech use virtual life to intimidate, blackmail and destroy real ones. That’s exactly what happened evidently when eBay’s supervisor of security operations decided to cancel the EcommerceBytes blog and carried out a cyberstalking campaign (including surveillance), against the husband and wife blogging team. Their astonishing story was published by the Boston Globe. It’s reads like the script of Michael Clayton (I prefer the Japanese title: The Fixer). eBay conducted an investigation, pushed out the CEO with a golden parachute and issued a statement that, of course, acknowledged the wrong but said ‘it’s okay now because the baddies are gone.’ Until next time, that is. eBay, of course, didn’t offer any compensation.

The Buddha’s face isn’t seen a fourth time

When the 3rd Tokyo State of Emergency (SOE) was announced, I predicted it would’t go well. Sure enough, infections started to rise before the end of SOE 3. Now we are in SOE 4 and infection rates are skyrocketing, well, skyrocketing compared to rates that were low to begin with. So life goes on as usual, the commuter time trains are crowded as usual, people go shopping as usual, there is nothing remotely panic-like despite media hysteria narratives of a ‘medical system breakdown.’

As always, it’s complicated. Few people are actually dying from COVID (and don’t forget that hospitals get a Japanese government subsidy when they report a COVID death, other deaths don’t pay). Influenza and pneumonia are much more real long term threats. Lockdowns and vaccination mandates will be impossible to implement as all the government tools to do so were locked away by the GHQ occupation and restructuring of Japan. Any attempt to invoke those kinds of centralized powers requires changing the American created Japanese constitution and nobody wants to do that (fun fact: the English language constitution of Japan is the official one, the Japanese language one a fake). Not that the situation is dire, a little context helps. And don’t forget the overall Japanese death rate dropped in 2020 YOY thanks to all that mask wearing and hand sanitizing.

Given the utter lack of useful long term planning demonstrated by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, the most likely course of action will be: attempting real fines for restaurants, bars, etc. that don’t follow SOE requests. Good luck with that.