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 […]
Apple Pay Suica - FeliCa - NFC - Transit
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 […]
Apple Pay Suica - Apple Pay Transit - NFC-Felica - Suica - Transit
Timeout: a very long transit card transit
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) […]
Apple Pay PASMO - Apple Pay Suica
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 […]
Mobile Payments
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 […]