Tag: Mobile Suica

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. There are 2 ways to transfer cards: automatic transfer with iOS 17 Setup Assistant and manual transfer in 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. iOS 17 Set Assistant automatically transfers all payment, transit, e-Money cards, and other Wallet items 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 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.

Manual card transfer in Wallet app
Users can manually transfer cards from the previous iPhone Wallet app to the new iPhone simply by adding it from Previous Cards. The old pre-iOS 17 ‘Suica 2-step’ of manually removing Suica from the old device before transfer is irrelevant and unnecessary.

Tap Previous Cards
Select cards then tap Continue
Tap Next to complete the transfer

Once transfer is complete, the previous card will remain visible in the Wallet app showing ‘This card cannot be used’. The card can be safely removed, you can also safely wipe the device.

  • 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 via Previous Cards.

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 all devices have a good WiFi or mobile 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.

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.

Wanted: a JR East Apple Pay Suica support campaign in English

Wanted Dead of Alive…If you see this poster…send me a picture (this one from Inoue san)

Now that plastic Suica cards are mostly unavailable unless you tearfully plead with a kind hearted JR East station staffer that you lost it and need a replacement Suica, inbound tourists are stuck with lining up at Narita or Haneda station kiosks for the not so welcome Welcome Suica. Unless of course you have iPhone. In that case any inbound visitor can add Suica and use in Wallet without any app, as long as they don’t try it with a VISA credit card.

JR East has a multilingual Train Reservation site for visitors, they even have a multilingual Suica page, but there is no mention of Mobile Suica. There is a multilingual Mobile Suica support FAQ but it is buried away and has not been updated since 2018. The only Mobile Suica English language effort to date was the temporary and long dead SuicaEng app that was a one trick pony for adding a single Suica card to Apple Pay Wallet. When Wallet added native add card Suica support in iOS 13 JR East killed the app and focused on rolling out the multilingual Train Reservation site which they did in June 2021.

But now more than ever, it’s time for JR East to get serious about English language Mobile Suica support and marketing campaign. The problem facing JR East though is where to invest precious resources that grow the Mobile Suica user base while keeping costs down. Spending multilingual money on us ungrateful, ever complaining ‘I want it now’ gaijins isn’t always cost effective ROI. Take the current version of Suica App for instance, localizing now it is a waste because Suica App will be completely replaced with a new Suica 2.0 compliant app and feature set in the near future.

There is also the problem of Mobile Suica Stored Fare (SF) balance refunds. Mobile Suica refunds can only be done via the app and sent to a Japanese bank account for a ¥220 processing fee. This is because Suica is JPY currency and originally created for domestic use only. Smartphones didn’t exist when Mobile Suica launched on Docomo in 2006, international visitor use was not possible back then.

Mobile Suica could conceivably do what Hong Kong Octopus does with forced Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) in their Octopus for Tourists app, but that is a high price, and a credit card compliance violation to boot, for the convenience of refunding a mobile transit card balance chump change in foreign currency. Better to do what JR East already recommends in English: forget the refund nonsense and run the Mobile Suica balance to zero.

Let’s keep things simple. Here are some cheap, easy things JR East can do to promote Mobile Suica for inbound use:

  • An English Mobile Suica marketing campaign that educates iPhone users how easy it is to add and use Suica without any apps.
  • An updated and easily accessible multilingual FAQ/Support page.
  • A slightly tweaked Suica App that allows users to delete a zero balance Suica card from Apple Pay without the hassle of registering a Mobile Suica account.
  • Last but not least, do whatever you can to convince the VISA payment network in Japan to remove their credit card block of Mobile Suica (and PASMO, and ICOCA). Not an easy task with all the moving VISA network pieces to be sure.

A little bit here, a little bit there can pay big dividends in the short term without reinventing anything for inbound visitors. Just make what’s already there and already great, easily accessible.

How long will the Suica card shortage last?

The first indication that something was up the FeliCa chip supply chain came on May 31 as an small announcement from Iwatekenkotsu Co., Ltd that the scheduled last leg of their Suica 2 in 1 Iwate Green Pass bus support rollout would be delayed due to new IC reader device procurement delays.

This was quickly followed by a large joint press release from JR East and PASMO on June 2 announcing that unregistered Suica and PASMO cards, the plastic ones that people can buy in Tokyo area station kiosks, would not be available starting June 8, ‘until further notice’.

On July 31 JR East • PASMO announced that registered Suica and PASMO plastic cards would not be available from August 2, expanding upon the June 8 sales suspension of unregistered Suica and PASMO plastic cards. The news turned media heads but was not a surprise to industry analysts and insiders.

The official reason for the Suica plastic card sales suspension is ‘the global chip shortage,’ but that doesn’t sound right when there are gluts out there. These things can be complex so I asked an old colleague who specializes in chip production analysis about the situation. He had this to say:

Domestic manufacturers of non-volitive memory of the type used in FeliCa chips, reduced manufacturing capacity (the NAND market segment is currently in a recession due to overproduction and excess inventory). This reduction came when there was an increase of inbound visitors to Japan buying Suica and PASMO cards. There was also increased demand for new Suica purchases due to the expansion of the Suica area to the Tohoku region, because the population is not as large as Kanto and Kansai, demand is expected to settle down soon.

However as production capacity will not return to previous levels, there is a high possibility that supply and demand will continue to be tight to some extent.

Other Japanese sources say another factor is that all transit IC manufacturing has been sub-contracted out to Taiwan. In short, buckle up folks, it’s going to be a long bumpy ride as in addition to manufacturers cutting production due to the non-volitive memory glut, Japanese IC card production (FeliCa chip, antenna, card, etc.) has been farmed out to Taiwan. As the saying goes, they’re always a great risk putting all ones eggs in one basket, especially with chip production. But no matter how many times companies learn this hard lesson, companies soon forget.

The May 27 Tohoku Suica launch and Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate card launches are certainly a short term factor in the FeliCa chip shortage as JR East is still selling both registered and unregistered Suica cards in the Tohoku region and Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate cards. Outside of the Tohoku area JR East and PASMO will continue to sell plastic commuter passes and inbound speciality cards like Welcome Suica and PASMO PASSPORT, however inventory is tight and JR East reduced the number of Welcome Suica sales outlets on August 2.

People assume that Transit IC cards from other regions like ICOCA or SUGOCA are readily available but this is not the case as operators are quietly limiting sales outlets. SUGOCA for example is not available at station kiosks but kept ‘under the counter’: buyers have to go the nearest JR Train Reservation office and ask for it. Expect this to start happening for all regular non-commuter pass Transit IC cards as well, partly to control inventory, partly to keep scalpers from cleaning out transit cards from kiosk station machines for resale.

Why not use Mobile Suica and Mobile PASMO then? Unfortunately the mobile situation for inbound visitors isn’t great: visitors with only VISA cards or Android are basically out of luck.

So unless VISA lifts their foreign card Mobile Suica blockade, and it has been in place for a year now, even Apple Pay Suica • PASMO • ICOCA users are limited to using Mastercard and Amex cards…using cash recharge. More on that situation in later post.

The easiest solution for JR East and PASMO is to encourage domestic Suica and PASMO users to go with Mobile Suica and Mobile PASMO instead of plastic cards. They are already doing that but expect more Mobile Suica and Mobile PASMO promotion campaigns and reward point enticements. If anything, the plastic Suica • PASMO card shortage is the best Mobile Suica • PASMO promotion ever.

A warning sign for Japanese open loop transit operators: when the EMV payment network goes down, FeliCa networks keep working

Mobile Suica has had a rough 2 weeks. On June 24 a construction error during server center power supply expansion work left JR East Mobile Suica and Eki-Net online reservation services offline for 12 hours (0:00~12:00). It was an embarrassing mishap but the actual damage was small, limited to refunding Eki-Net ticket holders who couldn’t change ticket reservations. Mobile Suica was offline so no refunding was necessary because nobody could use the Mobile Suica credit card recharge service. No need to refund what people can’t buy.

A shorter but much more problematic outage happened on June 27. Media mistakenly reported that Mobile Suica was down but this was not the case as Mobile Suica on Android was working just fine. It was an Apple Pay problem: Apple Pay servers went down from heavy demand on Apple Pay ICOCA launch day, taking down not only Apple Pay Suica recharge but also PASMO, ICOCA, nanaco, WAON, Octopus, China T-Union, adding credit cards and other Wallet services worldwide. As the outage took place during the Japanese business day, JR East had to refund iOS Suica App users who attempted to buy or use Suica Green Car tickets during the Apple Pay outage.

Just as things were settling down, another even shorter 40 minute period of trouble occurred on July 8 at 12:00~12:40 JST. Again the media reported that Mobile Suica was down, again they were mistaken, and again it wasn’t an JR East or Mobile Suica problem, it was a much wider, and unreported, EMV credit card payment network outage. EMV transactions on readers everywhere were not responding, and they were not working for Apple Pay or Google Pay. However FeliCa payment network cards were working.

And finally there was, yet another, Apple Pay and Wallet outage on July 14 from 17:45 to 18:30 JST, with another round of Japanese media bashing poor old Mobile Suica without checking for the wider Apple Pay outage.

Mobile Suica caught the media blame because they were the only company duly reporting the problems on Mobile Suica support SNS services. JR East never lays an outage blame on Apple Pay, or any other service partner because they know Mobile Suica users don’t care, they only want to know when things are not working and when they will be fixed. This is the way it should be done because they are giving their users fast, accurate, service information…even if that means they have to take the media and SNS blame that comes with it.

But despite all the Mobile Suica outages including the EMV payment network one, the Suica card itself always remained working, both digital or plastic versions. As long as there is money on the card it works for transit and payments, and cash recharge is available 24/7. This is an under appreciated but very important aspect of the Transit IC system: there is always a non-network fail safe cash backup. Japanese never put all their household finances in one basket, cash is always the one thing that works after an earthquake, typhoon, natural or manmade infrastructure damaging disaster strikes.

In the EMV credit card payment network outage there was, without doubt, unreported trouble with open loop system test deployments on Nankai, Fukuoka Metro and other QUADRAC • stera transit operated systems, which all open loop systems in Japan use: it’s the only open loop player in town.

Unlike Mobile Suica however, when the credit card payment processing network goes down, open loop doesn’t have a fail safe cash backup. And while that’s not a problem now with small installation test sites and a tiny user base, it will be when open loop goes big time. The transit companies deploying open loop have an obligation to take care of their customers, but will they take JR East-like responsibility when QUADRAC goes down, or stera goes down, or NTT Data CAFIS, payment processing centers, or mobile carrier networks? Because believe me they will. All highly connected, interdependent networks do. That’s why we always need alternative methods and networks. Too bad that VISA is working to remove the non-EMV transit gate competition in Japan.

MythBusters: plastic Suica isn’t safer than Mobile Suica

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On June 24 from 0:37 to 13:00 JST, JR East online services went offline due to a mishap during server center related power supply construction. The most affected services were the most used: Mobile Suica and the online Eki-Net ticketing service. While embarrassing and inconvenient, the damage was minimal due to the fact that the outage was like a very long nightly maintenance when all services are taken offline. There were no transactions taking place, all JR East had to do was refund Eki-Net ticket holders who couldn’t change their reservations.

A shorter, far more problematic and partial Mobile Suica outage happened on June 24 from 16:24 to 18:00. Despite media reports screaming ‘Mobile Suica is down again’ even though the system itself was running just fine on non-Apple devices. This one was not on JR East or the Mobile Suica system: Apple Pay servers crashed from overload on Apple Pay ICOCA launch day taking down Suica, PASMO, WAON, nanaco, Hong Kong Octopus and other Apple device Wallet services worldwide. JR East had to refund iOS Suica App iPhone users who could not use purchased Suica Green Car Tickets.

Media reports were sensationalistic and misleading, claiming the outage left “Suica App Users Stranded at Ticket Gates“, when Suica App has nothing to do with using Suica at transit gates. Naturally, social media sites and online media report comment sections were full of ‘I’m going back to plastic Suica’ comments. Yahoo News Japan even ran a brain dead hack piece from GIZMODO entitled, “Be prepared: carry an unregistered plastic Suica in case of Mobile Suica problems,” recommending unregistered Suica because, ‘anybody can share it.’ Both writer and editors failed to notice that unregistered plastic Suica and PASMO cards are currently unavailable due to chip shortages.

Here’s the thing, plastic Suica isn’t ‘safer’ than Mobile Suica. It’s a myth:

  • Myth: I can’t use Mobile Suica if the service is offline.
  • Reality: Offline Mobile Suica doesn’t affect card use, the situation is no different than nightly offline maintenance.

You can always use Mobile Suica for transit and payments, it is no different from plastic, a Mobile Suica outage doesn’t affect that. The only real impact is the mobile exclusive credit/debit card recharge function and this is no different than the nightly maintenance when Mobile Suica goes offline. It’s the same situation for Mobile PASMO and Mobile ICOCA. Cash recharge is always available 24/7 at any convenience store, Seven Bank ATMs which are everywhere, and mobile friendly station recharge kiosks which are also everywhere these days.

The only real outage inconvenience was for people who wanted to buy Mobile Suica extras: Suica Green Car Tickets, Suica Day Passes, or those who might need to renew their Mobile Suica commuter pass…on a Saturday.

Which brings us to the GIZMODO Japan hack piece that was full of outrageous misinformation, implying not only that Mobile Suica on smartphones automatically stops working in an outage, you can simply go out and buy a plastic unregistered Suica card and use it anytime you need to. This is exactly the same stupid shit that bloggers posted back when Apple Pay Suica launched in 2016: carry a plastic Suica in case your iPhone battery dies.

Even in the days before Power Reserve Express Mode iPhone, this was, and is, completely wrong ‘advice’ that will get you in trouble at the transit gate. Never forget the golden Suica rule: the same Suica card used to tap in must be used to tap out to complete the transit. If the Suica you started out with cannot be used at the exit gate, for whatever reason (lost card, dead device, etc.), the gate alarm will sound and you must pay full fare in cash.

I’m sure there will always be people who believe that plastic Suica is somehow ‘safer’, and that’s fine, but the reality is that with JR East reducing station staff wherever they can, finding real people to deal with plastic card problems will be more of a hassle than it already is. In the future JR East will tell plastic card users to use online assistants at station kiosks. In the end it will be faster to do it all on mobile.

The GIZMODO JP Suica hack piece is credited to ‘amino’ who doesn’t have clue about using Suica