Suica: How Japan's First IC Transit Card Was Nearly Killed by Design
Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card
Suica, Japan's first IC transit card, processes a full transaction in under 200 milliseconds without a battery or internet connection. The article traces its development from Sony's initial rejection by JR East to its success in Hong Kong, and the critical design flaw that nearly doomed the project—solved by tilting the reader 13.5 degrees to match natural hand motion.
Nearly half of the testers couldn’t get through the gates.
- alerighi
Maybe it was advanced for the time being created, to me it's just any other RFID card that is issued everywhere else in the world in the matter of read speed, from every public transit card that I find in every EU country I've visited (maybe for a US citizen not used to public transit it seems something special, I don't know), to skipasses, to even your gym card.
Having the option to also pay with credit card would be much more convenient to tourists, when I visited Japan I've had difficulties finding the right place to get a SUICA card (being that my Android phone didn't have Felica chip, as most phones sold outside Japan), and on top of that you almost everywhere need to charge it with only cash. And you can charge it only by 500 or 1000 yen at the time (depending on the machine), and of course tickets always have not round prices like 110 yen. And you have 500 yen of deposit for a card that probably costs to them 10 yen to manufacturer, unless you get the red SUICA card that you can get only in some special machines at the airport but with that you don't get back the unused credit when you leave (you can spend it at vending machine tough).
So the speed saving of a couple of ms of not having to pay by tapping your normal credit card is completely vanished by wasting time to charge that card.
BTW even if they don't want to put credit card POS on every station (I get it, it's expensive and they need to pay fees if someone uses a card, compared to cash) they could make a syste […]
- cube00
When you tap your card on a terminal, it reads and rewrites the card locally in an instant, with the entire transaction processed in under 200 milliseconds.
It's depressing that some transport systems around the world delivered decades later couldn't match this (using a proprietary card not a credit card), looking at you Myki.
- cptcobalt
If you haven’t experienced suica, it’s like magically fast. Faster than NFC, faster than Apple Pay, faster than tap to pay, faster than Disney magic bands, faster than your work badge. It absolutely floored me every time I used it in Japan and it’s a full payment transaction.
- speak_plainly
Sad to see the mascot going in March. Apparently this entire brand reset is tied to something JR East is calling 'Suica Renaissance,' which is about a ten-year effort to turn Suica into a lifestyle brand.
Whitepaper: https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/press/2024/pdf/20241210.pdf
They're planning on moving beyond the ¥20,000 prepaid balance limit, they are adding QR code payments (think WeChat and Alipay), making Suica work across regions and support more touchless and cloud-based systems, and connecting it more with banking, shopping, loyalty, discounts, and local services.
So essentially they want to become your default payment platform which is a huge opportunity given how paper-money-driven Japan is.
- LM37
I’ve visited Tokyo four times, and I’ve been using the same Suica card since my very first trip! I love it, and I’d really like to collect all the Suica-like cards, such as PASMO, ICOCA, Kitaca, and more.
I love it when little everyday things bring a tiny bit of happiness and color into daily life. (for more info: https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2359_003.html)
- mrbonner
I’m going to Japan soon. Should I just use the iPhone Suica version or get the physical one?
- juliansimioni
I am literally on a flight to Japan right now, and one of my main goals is to add a Suica card to my collection of transit cards from around the world (currently 31 cards large).
Sadly physical cards may only have a few years left, for the most part using tap-to-ride is superior. So I really have to get out there and grab them while I can.
- ben1040
It's a bummer that while Google Wallet on Android phones supports Suica, they only offer the feature if the device was sold originally in Japan. Presumably they didn't want to pay Sony the licensing fees for the technology on non-JP devices.
iPhones have it worldwide, so a visitor to Japan can use Apple Pay to stand up a card and fund it.