Tag: Suica

The ¥10 barrier-free train station tax fare increase

The railway station barrier-free fee system is “a Japanese railway fare system established with the aim of promoting barrier-free railway stations in urban areas” by leveraging a fee on urban railway users in Tokyo, Kansai and Fukuoka areas. It is a barrier-free train station tax if you will, added to regular adult fare and commuter passes but generally not child fares or school commuter passes. The barrier-free tax will cover station infrastructure costs for adding platform doors, elevators, etc., to the designated metropolitan area stations.

From 2023-03-18 most railway companies in the Tokyo area, both JR East and non-JR, raised transit fares to pay this barrier-free station tax. Here is the breakdown for the Greater Tokyo area focusing on JR East.

Suica
A ¥10 fare increase for paper tickets and regular Suica/Transit IC cards In the JR East designated barrier-free tax zone. Suica Commute Plan increases within the same tax zone are listed below. The overall average fare increase is 1.4%.

The Barrier-Free fee increase to JR East regular adult fare and commuter passes in the designated tax zone

Non-JR East Tokyo area railway companies are raising regular fares by ¥10 but commuter passes are a different story.

While barrier-free stations are good thing and not a big tax to pay for all that new infrastructure, the timing could not be worse. Living costs are rising across the board, little increases add up, eating into salaries that are not rising much, if at all. Each transfer on a multiple transit line routes now has increased fare with each transit operator section. For example: my work commute uses JR East and Tokyu lines, the old fare was ¥419, new fare is ¥457.

To help ease the pain, JR East is offering Off-Peak Suica Commuter Passes (plastic)/Commute Plans (Mobile Suica), that offer a 10% discount with the following condition: Off-Peak passes are valid when used outside the designated peak time of the commute plan entry station. If you enter the start point station during peak time, your Suica Off-Peak commute pass is ignored and Suica balance is used to pay fare.

In real world use it simply means if you have an Suica Off-Peak Commuter Pass, don’t enter your start station during the station designed morning ‘Peak Time’ on work days. If you do the commuter pass doesn’t work. Any time outside of ‘Peak Time’ you are good to do. This is much better than the convoluted, often confusing Suica Off-Peak JRE POINT Campaign that ends March 31.

Apple Pay Suica users can purchase Off-Peak commute plans in an upcoming version of Suica App (v5.2.1), but you must purchase a new pass. Regular commute plans can only be renewed as regular commute plans, they cannot be migrated to off-peak plans. School commute plans and passes will not be charged the barrier-free tax which is good news. Another bonus: high school and jr. high school students can add and use Mobile Suica school commute plans staring March 18.

I migrated to an Off-Peak on March 18 and posted a video showing the cancellation~refund of a regular pass, and purchase of a new Off-Peak pass.

Suica App v5.2.1 coming this March will support Off-Peak and High School/Jr.High School student commute plans

PASMO
The situation for PASMO private rail and other non-JR East rail operators is varied:

Keio and Keikyu are raising fares later this year in October.

Regular adult fares are up ¥10 in line with JR East, some have also raised child fares by ¥10. Commuter passes are generally being raised more, and there are no off-peak commuter passes. Kansai area transit operators are raising fares on April 1, Fukuoka on March 27. Be sure to check how the fare and commuter pass increases apply to your local commute situation.

I have update the Apple Pay Suica • PASMO Commute Plan Guide with Suica Off-Peak Commute Plan details.

Related: How much does Suica Off-Peak Commuter Pass really save you?

Published 2023-01-15, Updated 2023-03-24

State of Suica 2022

Now that the 1st wave of Suica 2 in 1 card launches is complete, it’s a good time to review the ‘State of Suica’. And it’s always interesting to examine the cultural differences too, when it comes to labeling trends as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Westerners for example invariably say, what’s the point of having so many Suica card flavors? It’s a waste, better to have just one. It’s a classic double standard professing to want but insisting that life should revolve around single kind of credit card. Japanese don’t seem to care much as the culture is adept at ‘振り分け’: this thing for doing this, that thing for doing that. And the region affiliate users getting Suica for the first time seem pretty excited and all Suica varieties work the same for transit and e-Money purchases.

As of now we have the following plastic Suica card flavors beside the regular Suica available at station kiosks: Rinkai Suica, Monorail Suica, Welcome Suica and Suica Light. On the Mobile Suica side we have: Osaifu Keitai, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay, along with branded Mobile Suica for Rakuten Suica and au Suica on Osaifu Keitai and Mizuho Suica on iOS. Last but not least we have 11 new Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate Transit cards that are the keystone of JR East’s MaaS strategy.

What exactly are the differences? It comes down to commuter passes or points. For Suica 2 in 1 cards specifically, it is both. This is a small but very important difference. All the other non-regular Suica outside 2 in 1, come with specific features and limitations. Rakuten and KDDI au users can recharge those Suica with those outside point systems but they can’t add commute plans. Welcome Suica expires in 28 days, Rinkai and Monorail Suica exist for commuter passes and nothing else, and so on.

Suica 2 in 1 doesn’t have limitations and does more than any other Suica: it can hold 2 different commuter passes (one from JR East, one from the region affiliate) and it supports 2 different point systems: messy JRE POINT which is an optional account setup manually linked to the Suica card number, and local government subsidized region affiliate transit points which are automatic and stored on the card itself. The only thing the user needs to do is use the appropriate card for transit to earn and use transit point discounts.

In a mobile payment era where everybody is distinguishing themselves with increasingly complex reward point schemes, the simplicity and flexibility of Suica 2 in 1 transit points, think of it as locally processed transit point stored fare, can go places that old Suica cannot. Imagine how many more people would use Suica transit in Tokyo if it came with transit point discounts. There are other 2 in 1 features not yet supported by regular Suica: disabled and elderly transit user discounts. These are coming to Tokyo area plastic issue Suica, and PASMO too, this October though I suspect those won’t come to Mobile Suica until it gets an upgrade.

Mobile FeliCa hasn’t been updated to the next generation ‘Super Suica’ FeliCa SD2 architecture yet, but once updated we should see Suica 2 in 1 on mobile and new Suica features, along with more Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate cards. All in all the new Suica 2 in 1 card format tells us where JR East wants to go.

There are some interesting numbers from the JR East FY results. All things transit took a huge hit in FY 2021 from the COVID pandemic, Suica included, but are now recovering though still below pre-covid transaction levels. Another surprise is the popularity of Eki-Net eTickets, a 39% usage rate is not bad for a service that only started in March 2020. One of the smarter things JR East did with Eki-Net eTicket discounts is making them simple and available to all Eki-Net users and credit cards. The JR Central EX system has 2 different Shinkansen eTicket tiers (EX-Press and smartEX) with larger EX discounts limited to select credit cards.

There are lots of things that JR East needs to do longterm, more Suica day passes, Mobile Suica recharge that is available 24/7, phasing out legacy mag strip ticketing and UWB touchless transit gates. In the short term we have Cloud Suica and Mobile ICOCA coming online in March 2023, the end of the current fiscal year. At the very least it should be an interesting time for JR West ICOCA users, and one more nail in the PiTaPa coffin.

Suica 2021~2022 snapshot from JR East FY report
The 1st wave release of Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate cards

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.

Real world Eki-Net impressions

I finally had the chance to use Eki-Net app, aka Eki-Net 2, eTickets (JR East Shinkansen) and Ticketless (JR East Express Trains) reservations on several trips recently, a real world workout. After a shaky launch in March 2020, followed by a major system upgrade in June of this year, the foundation is in place and JR East is going all out to promote Eki-Net for the year-end travel season that will see a considerable uptick compared to last year’s ‘stay home’ and stew regimen. I posted an Eki-Net 2 overview in June that covers the basics, this post is a short followup of impressions.

Using Eki-Net eTickets at the transit gate is clean and easy as the JR East promo videos. The messy part is creating an Eki-Net Japanese online account that is completely separate from your Mobile Suica account and your JRE POINT account. They all link together but are all separate with separate login names and passwords. This is the weak point of using JR East online services, there is no single master login system ID service like Apple ID or Google Account.

Once the Eki-Net online account is setup, with a VIEW credit card duly registered for maximum JRE POINT, using the bare-bone iOS Eki-Net app is a snap. Japanese user reviews of the Eki-Net app are overwhelming negative, but I found the app covers the basics well enough for what it is designed for: finding a discount reservation for your travel date, choosing a seat, purchasing the eTicket and assigning it to a designated Apple Pay Suica (or PASMO) card, or cards if your are purchasing for more than one. Group eTicket purchase and Transit IC card assignment are very convenient features.

Group ticket purchases and transit IC card designation are very convenient Eki-Net features

My only real quibbles of using Eki-Net boil down to two feature requests.

  • Apple Pay Support: back in the Suica App Shinkansen eTicket days, you could purchase tickets using Apple Pay or the Suica App registered credit card. Both were convenient. Eki-Net does not support in-app Apple Pay. You make purchases with the app and have to confirm the purchase with the registered card CVV number for security purposes…a pain in the butt, pull out the physical card every time because I never can remember the code. Apple Pay in-app purchase would be great to have and it should be easy enough to arrange the backend so that Apple Pay VIEW purchases earn JRE POINT automatically.
  • Notifications: in the current version of Eki-Net (v2.1.5) train time notifications are basically email only, once when you make the reservation, another email before train departure and a final email notification when the assigned Apple Pay Suica card or equivilant goes through the Shinkansen gate. There is a link to add the ticket train boarding day/time as a calendar event that does in a pinch, but I would also like to have regular and robust native iOS notification support. For me there is nothing so handy as Apple Watch haptic notifications.
  • Eki-Net email notification with eTicket purchase 1-3
  • Eki-Net email notification with eTicket purchase details 2-3
  • Eki-Net email notification with eTicket gate transit 3-3

Eki-Net works well enough as is, but having Apple Pay in-app support and iOS notifications would significantly improve the app experience. There is a lot of room for other improvements: it would be great to have smooth integration with other eTicketing services for private rail and other JR Group companies (EX, etc.). Suica is celebrating it’s 20th anniversary this year, Eki-Net is at anniversary #21. The current state of Eki-Net App and eTicketing makes it clear the mobile ticketing journey is just beginning.

Mobile FeliCa evolution: FeliCa without the FeliCa chip

Mobile FeliCa is a Java Card applet on a secure element (SE). If the right applet is present with the right keys, and the CLF (contactless front-end) is configured to route Type F frames to the SE, you can enable Mobile FeliCa on any SE.

FeliCa Dude

FeliCa Dude did his usual public service of posting Mobile FeliCa details for the latest Pixel 6 devices. There wasn’t any change from Pixel 5, so no global NFC Pixel for inbound visitors. Nevertheless it’s a good opportunity to review some important recent developments that have taken place behind the scenes on the Android Mobile FeliCa side and examine some possible 2022 scenarios. Things have changed even if most users don’t notice any difference.

The chart outlines Mobile FeliCa on Google Pixel developments based on information from FeliCa Dude’s tweets.

Mobile FeliCa 4.0 (Pixel 4) freed Android device manufacturers from having to use embedded secure element + NFC chips from the FeliCa Networks supply chain. Any FAST certified secure element will do. This development has resulted in a number of inexpensive Osaifu-Keitai SIM-Free smartphones released by Chinese manufacturers recently that are selling well. Hopefully it will have wider implications for inexpensive global NFC Android devices. There are lots of people in Hong Kong who would buy one to use Octopus.

Mobile FeliCa 4.1 (Pixel 5/Pixel 6) introduced multiple secure element domains. This allows the device manufacturer to ‘own’ the eSE and load or delete Java Card applets. FeliCa Dude thinks that multiple secure element domains (MSED) might play a part in the MIC digital My Number Card due to launch on Osaifu Keitai devices in 2022. My Number card uses NFC-B but MSED allows the Mobile FeliCa secure element to host it anyway, an interesting development.

Mobile FeliCa 4.2 or 5.0? The next version of Mobile FeliCa (MF) will hopefully support FeliCa SD2 next generation features that shipped in November 2020, features that power Suica 2 in 1 Region Affiliate Transit Cards (aka Super Suica) which are going wide in March 2022. These cards need to be on mobile for future MaaS service plans outlined by JR East which cannot happen until SD2 features are added.

The improvements in MF 4.1 certainly give Android device manufacturers the ability to update MF over the air but don’t hold your breath. Standard industry practice to date has been ‘buy a new device to get new features’. Apple has been somewhat better in this regard: MIFARE support was added in iOS 12 for Student ID cards and iOS 15 fixed some Calypso bugs on ‌iPhone‌ XR/XS and ‌iPhone‌ SE.

A FeliCa Dude Reddit post comment regarding Asus smartphones illustrates the pre-MF 4.0 situation: “any phone that lists ‘NFC’ compliance must support Type F (FeliCa), but as there is no Osaifu-Keitai secure element <aka Mobile FeliCa secure element>, you will be limited to reading and potentially charging physical cards: you cannot use the phone as a card itself.”

That was then, this is now.

People assume FeliCa support requires a FeliCa chip but this is not true. The evolution of hardware independent Mobile FeliCa with Mobile FeliCa 4.x is very clear: the ‘FeliCa chip’ from Sony/FeliCa Networks requirement is long dead and gone. Manufacturers like Xiaomi claim they make special models and add FeliCa chips just for the Japanese market, but that’s just marketing BS: they run Mobile FeliCa on the same NXP NFC chipset they use everywhere. Modern smartphones supporting FeliCa don’t have a FeliCa chip, everything from EMV to FeliCa and MIFARE runs on any GlobalPlatform certified secure element on any Android device.

Hopefully the sum of recent Mobile FeliCa developments, along with Garmin Suica, Fitbit Suica and WearOS Suica support, indicate that Mobile FeliCa Osaifu Keitai services will become standard on Android devices as they have been on all iOS and watchOS devices since 2017.