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.
It's not only magically fast, but it's super useful. You can use it at vending machines + convenience stores anywhere (unless it's one of those old ones that only take cash/coins and print paper tickets) and at the shops as well.
People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
This is a consequence of the world being eaten by managed code. IBM made POS checkout terminals that were blazingly fast 40 years ago. Now every modern data processing technogy is glacial by comparison.
I've used a Suica card for many years now. I agree it's both fast and reliable.
One summer I was crisscrossing Tokyo by train over several days, using the Suica card, so I got to see a LOT of commuters. Lots of people were in a hurry and would run through the gates (the default state is open, it closes quickly if your card is out of funds or some other problem). Running through the gates while quickly touching the card to the reader. I've done that a couple of times myself.
It's also useful in that you can pre-order a Shinkansen ticket, for example, and link that purchase to your Suica card, which you then use for the Shinkansen gate. If there are other fees (which there may be) they're just deducted from the money the card holds, as usual. Makes everything very simple.
For me a physical card is easier than using a phone. A phone is so much larger so I would need to get it from a pocket somewhere, while the Suica card I can keep in my jeans pocket or some other easy place.
I also did prefer my plastic Pasmo (essentially the same as suica) card until I learned during my last trip, that it can only be recharged with cash :-/
I much prefer convenient over fast, being able to just tap my phone's uploaded IC card/alipay without having to open it up or switch cards is maybe 200ms slower, but I don't have to think or change what I'm doing. Plus with alipay it will just autodeduct so I don't ever have to think about that as well, though Apple wallet Suica makes it easy to reload too.
JRE required Suica to be instantly accessible so there's a setting in Apple Wallet to set a card to a default quick transit use card(forgot the exact name). If configured as such, just poking the gate antenna with earpiece end of an iPhone instantly completes the transaction just as fast as a real card does.
(yes, the antenna is in the top FaceID/Dynamic Island area, Osaifu Keitai spec requires a □つ icon wherever antenna is located, which Apple managed to completely ignore)
But you should probably just get a suica in your apple or google wallet, you don’t actually need an IC card. I’m not sure if using a phone makes it less fast though, I couldn’t tell (we had to get a card for my kid since he doesn’t have a phone).
Definitely better than the QR codes used by China.
You can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.
You can move your alipay card into apple wallet and have it as the default payment method, so do you don't even have to swipe or turn on your phone, it will even work in low-power/off mode.
Same deal with Opal in Sydney - the old school opal card processes a second or so faster than a card/apple pay/google pay that you can just keep walking. Smashed into the barrier the one time I forgot my card.
I’ve never noticed any delay on the London underground with Apple Pay or a normally debit card - certainly not a second. Havent used an oyster for years but I don’t remember it being faster.
I heard from friends that physical Suica cards tend to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't at all.
Took me roughly a minute to create one within Apple Wallet ahead of my trip, and that was it. Didn't need to install any apps or register on any websites, because creating a Suica card is natively supported in the wallet app.
Idk how the situation is like with Suica card on Android though, outside of the fact that unless the phone was purchased in Japan, it will typically lack the necessary hardware for it (which isn't a concern with iPhones, because all regional versions include it).
It's completely anonymous and available on many ticket machines. There are some half-wrong info that you have to fill in a form, but that's only for commuter passes and registered cards.
You just tap Buy Suica and insert two 1000 yen bills. The system keeps 500 yen as a deposit, which is refunded when you return the card, but it's also $3.50 for a little memorabilia.
If you absolutely don't want the keepsake, you can create a virtual card from Wallet on iPhone(7 or later). I believe an app is not needed through that path. Those can be loaded from your credit card, or at pink ticket vendors with the cavity for devices(IIRC the latter didn't work initially).
There was a brief period where it was difficult but that's gone now, you can set it up easily on Apple Wallet at least (apparently Google wallet is different?).
It used to be easy to get one from a 7-11, then it was hard for a bit, then it was easy again with digital wallets.
Yes, that was during the period where there was a chip shortage for things like cars and other industrial products, this also affected production of Suica cards at the time. During that period you couldn't buy unregistered Suica cards, but you could still buy registered cards (registered to your name). This was simply used as a mechanism to limit the number of cards because of the shortage, and you could also buy those "visitor" Suica cards (those I don't like, for various reasons).
I've been able to get multiple over the past nearly 10 years, very easily. I think there was a relatively brief shortage toward the end of the COVID closure, maybe the first year or so Japan was re-opened. But generally you could still get them, just not at major hubs.
We purchased it from a machine recently. By the way, can I just say: Japan cares about UI in a very different way to Europe. The screens had pleasant graphics and sound, and the buttons for pressing in numbers felt so good. It just felt like someone who cares designed that machine. I did not like the refill-your-IC-card machines though, they made very loud noises so you wouldn't forget to take your IC card with you.
OMNY with iOS Express Mode is crazy fast. I don't even have to do anything besides hold my wrist or phone next to the entrance: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105123
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.
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.
The penguin isn't owned by JR East, which is the problem. It's owned by a specific artist and licensed by Dentsu, who has to approve all usage. The other transit networks actually fully own their mascots, but Suica's Penguin isn't theirs to control.
The weirdest payment method has got to be the Coke ON vending machines that do not support SUICA but instead require you to QR code-IR blaster you to a website where you bluetooth pair with the vending machine then buy it on your mobile browser.
Like....somehow they turned a sub 1ms operation into a 4 minute 32 second one. It boggles the mind
Coke ON Pay uses an app that automatically pairs with the machine when you open it [1]. It’s pretty quick and takes less than 30 seconds once you set it up.
I think you might be referring to QR de Kessai [2], which was introduced in 2023 and is targeted more at inbound international tourists who don’t want to download the app and may not have an E-Money card. Basically they aim to support to support the widest possible audience - at the cost of a slow/clumsy experience. These machines should also accept payment via the faster Coke ON app method and often have E-Money tap-to-pay options too.
From that perspective it kinda sorta makes sense. But yeah I wouldn’t bother with it unless I was dying of thirst and I had no cash or other payment options available.
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.
Huge shout out that if you are going to be in Japan, you need one of these cards. I had thought I could just buy a two day pass in Tokyo. Which, you can, but you are almost certainly going to be limited to what routes and lines you can use, then. Which is brutal when you can't tell google maps which card you have.
Allows you to specify up front what passes you have, worked brilliantly on our honeymoon, especially when figuring out which Shinkansen reservations we needed to make.
As a rule, unless you have a very specific itinerary that involves a ton of travel within a single train company's network, passes in Japan are not worth it. This applies to both local subway passes and the sadly nerfed Japan Rail Pass for bullet trains. Even the Seishun 18 (unlimited travel for ¥2000/day, but local JR trains only) ain't what it used to be since they switched to requiring continuous days.
yeah they still have the ticket stations next to the one to refill/buy IC cards. and thanks to the 20/21 Olympics in english now too(not 2 levels of menus deep like many of them used to be) so pretty easy to do
tbh if you only stay in Tokyo then the combined Tokyo subway pass (Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway) is the best all around deal, you don't need anything else. ¥2000 for 72 hours
When you pay with Suica, the merchant pays a transaction fee of between 2 to 3.2%, similar to a credit card.
That's surprising. IC cards are so universally and cheerfully accepted that I assumed they had no per-transaction costs. Compare the US, where merchants can be surly about card payments.
There's a mindset difference. People are more willing to pay to reduce inconvenience for customers there, whereas here the inconvenience to the merchant sometimes matters more.
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.
It's not just a patent fee, IC-card support takes special hardware that enables the low latency of the transaction. Only Android phones sold in Japan (including Pixels) get it installed at manufacturing.
All Pixels have the hardware, it's only activated on Japan-based skus. You can root and change the sku to the japanese model and it works. Allegedly the Pixel 11 is only the US sku and the international sku, so all international 11s should have it activated unless they do some serious shenanigans.
Apple Watches also support it, which can make it even more convenient in some circumstances (no need to fish anything out of pockets/bags/etc, can be used while holding other things).
The only annoying thing is, well at least in 2023 or so, was that you had to actually load the card with funds even if you had a payment method attached on the iPhone wallet. That got me once as I was tapping like normal throughout my time in Japan and ran out of funds and held up a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls (judging by their attire) who definitely laughed at me and I of course laughed at myself too.
If you’re in Japan here is a tip though. If you’re not super close to the main cities and you’re in an area without as many tourists and you see a group of Japanese school children and they all are eating something - the same thing or stuff from the same place, copy them. You won’t be disappointed. Probably. Had the best curry pan or whatever it’s called in my life following that trick.
iPhones still let you use certain contactless features (like Suica) even when the battery has "run out" (ie., the main OS has shut off). The reserve battery power is enough to run Suica, CarKey support, and FindMy.
The best thing that you can add a Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, or TOICA card anytime to your Apple Wallet. You don't even have to be Japan. Just add transit pass and that's all, when you are there you can start using it instantly. But it works with a lot of cards all around the world (Hong Kong Octopus, Korea Tmoney, SF Clipper etc.) it's in the Wallet app itself.
I still have my Passmo card from my very first visit to Japan in 2008. I went back in 2018 and it still worked and had a balance. I used it as recently as 2025. Pretty cool!
It's a bit of a shame that the long-term "wow" factor has been somewhat negated by the new tourist cards that expire after four weeks ("Welcome Suica" and "Passmo Passport"). It looks like you can get the regular cards everywhere again if you want now, but when I visited in early 2024, there was a months-long shortage of regular cards going on,* so the airports only had those temporary cards available, meaning a whole lot of people came and left only ever getting a temporary one. (I went out of my way to get "real" permanent cards from a couple of other regions, although I regret not collecting more of them at some places I passed through.)
* I have no idea how a shortage of hardware would make it better to give out temporary, expiring cards than permanent cards, since I assume they use the same technology (and the temporary ones would cause more churn, if anything). But that was the story at the time.
Could be because of some payment regulation. IIUC prepaid payment method in Japan has to maintain a large sum of deposit to cover cost of refunds in case of insolvency situation. Balances on expired cards probably aren't used for that deposit calculation.
Also IIRC, relationship between Sony and JRE had soured few years ago and the fab in Japan that manufactured Suica cards was shut down. The contract went to Panasonic, but looks like Panasonic then sold off the smartcard unit to Nuvoton, and likely some security/nationalistic issues around that was the cause of the card supply issue.
There are really subtle cues to tell the model number(smartcards have model numbers!) and manufacturer of cards, most simply in tiny dent created by the cavity to hold the chip. Sony ones were circular and current cards are racetrack shaped.
The joys of single supplier most likely. Probably contracted to provide 1 mil a year or something then if tourism greater than that have the "disposable" ones... doesn't need to be any hardware difference though a simple time limited cards get activated with expiration date and server auto permanent inactivates them.
I was hoping the author would also discuss a bit more about the security / encryption side of it. If transactions are done only between the card and the reader, could one use a reader at home to alter the balance? If you can load the card on you phone I assume you can use the phone to read it, but that might not be true.
Anyway it was a great read! Glad to see somebody writing without (obvious) use of LLMs.
Suica was excellent when I had the chance to use it. I used the Apple Pay version and it worked flawlessly. I think I do prefer what I'm seeing more and more in the US with a tap-to-pay so I don't have to learn a new system, but Suica was so universal that I really couldn't complain. Makes sense especially with the larger diversity of digital payment methods and cash prevalence in Japan.
There are several types of QR code payments getting introduced, so it would be interesting to know the specifics. I'm only aware of using a QR code for Shinkansen tickets, which is something I have used and something a tourist can use as well. And then there's the new tickets slowly getting introduced in some areas, where the paper ticket has a QR code. I've not seen those yet, but it sounds like just an ordinary ticket otherwise.
An Indian curry restaurant in "my" local Aeon only accepts PayPay or cash and that's it, so you get all kinds. Other than that I've been able to use my Suica card in surprising places.
The FeliCa NFC standard made its way into more than just transit cards in Japan. One notable user is the Amusement IC network, which lets you quickly log into arcade games across multiple manufacturers using a single card. Some implementations (Konami's e-amusement most notably) even go as far as to allow any FeliCa-compatible card or device to be linked to a profile, including transit cards, phones (with no app required!) and certain models of Sony Bluetooth earbuds which use FeliCa for quick pairing.
Wait, the balance is stored on the card? I'm fairly sure the balance is shown in the JR app too, so presumably that cannot be the case. [Update: or maybe not? I opened the app now and it's asking me to enable NFC and hold it up to the card.]
Anyway I love my Suica. I got it a good decade or more ago, I have a few thousand yen on there, and it's always ready for me when I go back to Japan. Useful on the Metro, trains and in shops. Easy to top up at the plentiful, dedicated top up machines. I also loaded Shinkansen tickets on it last time and travelled "ticketless".
The card definitely stores the balance. They probably sync the transaction records to their servers, but during the transaction the value on the card is presumed to be the truth AFAICT.
Remember when the system was designed in the early 2000s the Internet was much less available and reliable, and when so many transactions happen every day, you don't want to get thousands of passengers stuck inside a metro station only because some Wifi router was down.
This is basically a limitation of the CAP theorem, in these situations there's really no choice but to sacrifice "consistency" and settle for eventual consistency.
I think even credit card payments for transit also make that sacrifice. I had a weird experience using a Visa card to pay for a tram ride because they were promoting it and had a discount. The machine indicated success and let me through, but since I rarely used the card, somehow the payment didn't go through afterwards (the credit card was in a very weird state). If they insisted that all the payment transactions complete successfully for a transit payment, it would be too inconvenient and unreliable to use.
Yes, they do store the value. There was a blogpost posted to HN last year that discusses the cryptographic features of these cards [1,2]. It's amazing that these cards are almost solving the problem of secure digital money.
Suica is incredible, I remember when I first visited Japan in the 2010’s I was amazed at the speed and ubiquity, now in America that tap to pay on transit terminals are becoming more ubiquitous I feel somewhat disappointed at the “lag” I feel compared to the suica transactions
There also seems to be some state logic as well. The card knows when I’m in the middle of a trip and doesn’t update the balance until a future tap when it can determine the extent of the trip (presumably). Very cool that it’s all done locally.
For me, other than the speed and convenience, I was amazed that I could use my same Suica card (on my iPhone) in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka. Even though each region has their own card, they have mutual use in most areas.
Coming from NYC and being used to swiping once to pay a flat fair, my first Suica lesson was they vary the fair by the distance traveled. This means you have to tap in AND out of buses and subways. It was a bit embarrassing and frustrating when I almost could not board a bus in Sapporo with my friends after they all tapped in and my card was rejected. WTF? Thankfully the bus driver showed me a sign in English telling me I forgot to tap out of a station or bus. Oh. He let me board the bus with my friends. Found a train station and the woman at the counter began holding up a series of English signs so we could figure out where I forgot to tap out to ensure the correct charge is applied then sent me on my way. Turns out I goofed up transferring between the Tokyo subway and Shinkansen where I didn't tap out of the subway, got stuck, and a frustrated transit worker just opened the gate to let my dumb tourist ass through meaning I didn't tap out of the subway.
I was floored when I found out you could pay for stuff with my "Japanese MetroCard." It's quite a wonderful system.
>Every Suica card has a chip storing two things: a unique card ID, and your current balance.
This is not true. It also stores some history on where you have last entered so it can do things like transfers or block you from exiting an area that you never entered.
> 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. For each tap, the card and terminal mutually authenticate each other and generate a fresh encryption key to prevent spoofing.
This is the part that I'd be interested in reading more about. I'd known there must be some data on the card itself (since I can still use smartphone apps to read my cards now that I'm back in the US), but assumed there must have been some server connection too since storing anything authoritative on the card would invite tampering, and wondered why they would've bothered to store a log of recent trips on the card itself in addition to the hypothetical servers. It does make sense for latency reasons that they'd design it for the card itself to be authoritative, but I wonder how they do prevent tampering.
It's largely the same as credit cards - the card have multiple data partitions and secure read/write are encrypted. Balances are logged on both the card and the station-level servers and correctable errors and/or mid-ride updates, if any, are propagated while the user is in motion, so that they can be written upon exit.
^ that was the official explanation for a long time, but they've reportedly transitioned to more credit-card like online system with no station-level servers, and also raised fees, which was negatively received by many rail operators aside JR East itself(which owns the system). There had been few rail companies experimenting with NFC credit card rides, though I'm personally suspecting it's more of bargaining power development.open threat than those lines seriously considering a switch.
The chips in the cards are secure enough that physical tampering is extremely difficult and software tampering is difficult enough with security by obscurity + encryption - the catch is that, it turns out, early Suica cards used DES(not even 3DES it seems), and they just didn't tell anybody until those went out of circulation. Plus, the prepaid limit of 20k yen(local equivalent of $200) limits abuse potential of the system; it's not worth trying to commit blatant frauds on the train-and-sandwiches card.
> The cards have no battery and aren’t self-powered in any way. Instead, the reader on the gate emits an electromagnetic field that powers the card just long enough to complete the transaction.
This is how all passive RFID works. It's pretty cool. There's even systems that are both passive and active. For example, as a Disney adult, I'm familiar with their magic bands which do have a battery but also work passively. For tying ride photos automatically to you the battery matters because you're either moving too fast or are too far from the camera for passive to be consistently effective. But for simply using it as payment or a ticket you're pressing the device up against a reader and no matter how old the battery is it'll continue working.
At a first glance passive RFID would be a perfect match for ride photos, the whole mechanism is ridiculously fast so speed of the ride would not matter much (the technology works at highway speeds just fine) and can work over ~15 meters.
But there are two somewhat significant issues with the radio layer in this application: the geometry of tag antenna is somewhat critical (making it into a band would be problematic) and the back scatter is attenuated by salt water blobs (ie. people) almost perfectly.
> The cards have no battery and aren’t self-powered in any way. Instead, the reader on the gate emits an electromagnetic field that powers the card just long enough to complete the transaction.
Brillant!
AT&T showed this in television commercials back in the 1980's.
"Can you go through a toll booth without stopping? You will. And the company that will bring it to you is AT&T."
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.
It's not only magically fast, but it's super useful. You can use it at vending machines + convenience stores anywhere (unless it's one of those old ones that only take cash/coins and print paper tickets) and at the shops as well.
People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
This is a consequence of the world being eaten by managed code. IBM made POS checkout terminals that were blazingly fast 40 years ago. Now every modern data processing technogy is glacial by comparison.
I've used a Suica card for many years now. I agree it's both fast and reliable. One summer I was crisscrossing Tokyo by train over several days, using the Suica card, so I got to see a LOT of commuters. Lots of people were in a hurry and would run through the gates (the default state is open, it closes quickly if your card is out of funds or some other problem). Running through the gates while quickly touching the card to the reader. I've done that a couple of times myself.
It's also useful in that you can pre-order a Shinkansen ticket, for example, and link that purchase to your Suica card, which you then use for the Shinkansen gate. If there are other fees (which there may be) they're just deducted from the money the card holds, as usual. Makes everything very simple.
For me a physical card is easier than using a phone. A phone is so much larger so I would need to get it from a pocket somewhere, while the Suica card I can keep in my jeans pocket or some other easy place.
I also did prefer my plastic Pasmo (essentially the same as suica) card until I learned during my last trip, that it can only be recharged with cash :-/
I much prefer convenient over fast, being able to just tap my phone's uploaded IC card/alipay without having to open it up or switch cards is maybe 200ms slower, but I don't have to think or change what I'm doing. Plus with alipay it will just autodeduct so I don't ever have to think about that as well, though Apple wallet Suica makes it easy to reload too.
JRE required Suica to be instantly accessible so there's a setting in Apple Wallet to set a card to a default quick transit use card(forgot the exact name). If configured as such, just poking the gate antenna with earpiece end of an iPhone instantly completes the transaction just as fast as a real card does.
(yes, the antenna is in the top FaceID/Dynamic Island area, Osaifu Keitai spec requires a □つ icon wherever antenna is located, which Apple managed to completely ignore)
It appears to be based on NFC-F with latency under 200 ms, called FeliCa. Similar to regular NFC at around 300 ms latency plus any network times.
https://www.sony.co.jp/en/Products/felica/NFC
[delayed]
But you should probably just get a suica in your apple or google wallet, you don’t actually need an IC card. I’m not sure if using a phone makes it less fast though, I couldn’t tell (we had to get a card for my kid since he doesn’t have a phone).
Definitely better than the QR codes used by China.
You can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.
Pixel phones bought outside Japan supposedly can if you do a little adb hacking to enable it, but I don't have a Pixel to try it myself.
Pixel phones outside of Japan are missing the Felica chip.
Apple pays the fee for all phones in the world to have the chip. Google only pays for Japan devices.
All iPhones can.
You can move your alipay card into apple wallet and have it as the default payment method, so do you don't even have to swipe or turn on your phone, it will even work in low-power/off mode.
It doesn't make it less fast! The same model is implemented on the mobile side, which uses the same technology.
Same deal with Opal in Sydney - the old school opal card processes a second or so faster than a card/apple pay/google pay that you can just keep walking. Smashed into the barrier the one time I forgot my card.
I’ve never noticed any delay on the London underground with Apple Pay or a normally debit card - certainly not a second. Havent used an oyster for years but I don’t remember it being faster.
Maybe I am just plainly wrong or encountered some specific stations, but this does not feel true from my experience.
During my last visit to London (in 2025), it felt noticeably slower than even NYC subway tap-to-pay.
Suica is a whole other beast that isn't even in the same category of speed. It genuinely feels sub-200ms instantaneous.
Correct, Suica is faster than Oyster (card), which is faster than paying with bank cards or phones in London.
(I haven't used the NYC system.)
That was not my experience in Japan; I found that it still took a second to go through every time, just like in New York/etc.
The card might be fast but getting one as a tourist is kind of a hassle
I heard from friends that physical Suica cards tend to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't at all.
Took me roughly a minute to create one within Apple Wallet ahead of my trip, and that was it. Didn't need to install any apps or register on any websites, because creating a Suica card is natively supported in the wallet app.
Idk how the situation is like with Suica card on Android though, outside of the fact that unless the phone was purchased in Japan, it will typically lack the necessary hardware for it (which isn't a concern with iPhones, because all regional versions include it).
It's completely anonymous and available on many ticket machines. There are some half-wrong info that you have to fill in a form, but that's only for commuter passes and registered cards.
You just tap Buy Suica and insert two 1000 yen bills. The system keeps 500 yen as a deposit, which is refunded when you return the card, but it's also $3.50 for a little memorabilia.
If you absolutely don't want the keepsake, you can create a virtual card from Wallet on iPhone(7 or later). I believe an app is not needed through that path. Those can be loaded from your credit card, or at pink ticket vendors with the cavity for devices(IIRC the latter didn't work initially).
There was a brief period where it was difficult but that's gone now, you can set it up easily on Apple Wallet at least (apparently Google wallet is different?).
It used to be easy to get one from a 7-11, then it was hard for a bit, then it was easy again with digital wallets.
Yes, that was during the period where there was a chip shortage for things like cars and other industrial products, this also affected production of Suica cards at the time. During that period you couldn't buy unregistered Suica cards, but you could still buy registered cards (registered to your name). This was simply used as a mechanism to limit the number of cards because of the shortage, and you could also buy those "visitor" Suica cards (those I don't like, for various reasons).
Anyway, that problem is long gone.
Is it?
https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/welcomesuica....
I've been able to get multiple over the past nearly 10 years, very easily. I think there was a relatively brief shortage toward the end of the COVID closure, maybe the first year or so Japan was re-opened. But generally you could still get them, just not at major hubs.
No, just download the Suica app and top it up with Apple pay.
Super easy via your Apple wallet
I bought one from a machine easily at a train station. It spits the card out for you.
Really? In 2009 I just bought one at a vending machine, but I haven't really explored Japan since then
We purchased it from a machine recently. By the way, can I just say: Japan cares about UI in a very different way to Europe. The screens had pleasant graphics and sound, and the buttons for pressing in numbers felt so good. It just felt like someone who cares designed that machine. I did not like the refill-your-IC-card machines though, they made very loud noises so you wouldn't forget to take your IC card with you.
The best part is if you press the help button a real person pops out of the machine in a few seconds.
+1 you can walk through the subway turnstile and not slow down.
Anything is faster than NY turnstile lol.
In NY, sometime i have to double pay because the card that worked on bus doesn't work on subway...
OMNY with iOS Express Mode is crazy fast. I don't even have to do anything besides hold my wrist or phone next to the entrance: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105123
I don't often do transfers, though.
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.
The penguin isn't owned by JR East, which is the problem. It's owned by a specific artist and licensed by Dentsu, who has to approve all usage. The other transit networks actually fully own their mascots, but Suica's Penguin isn't theirs to control.
They're a bit late to the party. It's still no China, but Japan has taken up digital payments big time post COVID and PayPay now has the lion's share.
Nooo the penguin is the best part of suica!
The weirdest payment method has got to be the Coke ON vending machines that do not support SUICA but instead require you to QR code-IR blaster you to a website where you bluetooth pair with the vending machine then buy it on your mobile browser.
Like....somehow they turned a sub 1ms operation into a 4 minute 32 second one. It boggles the mind
Coke ON Pay uses an app that automatically pairs with the machine when you open it [1]. It’s pretty quick and takes less than 30 seconds once you set it up.
I think you might be referring to QR de Kessai [2], which was introduced in 2023 and is targeted more at inbound international tourists who don’t want to download the app and may not have an E-Money card. Basically they aim to support to support the widest possible audience - at the cost of a slow/clumsy experience. These machines should also accept payment via the faster Coke ON app method and often have E-Money tap-to-pay options too.
From that perspective it kinda sorta makes sense. But yeah I wouldn’t bother with it unless I was dying of thirst and I had no cash or other payment options available.
[1] https://szabo.jp/2021/05/16/coke-on/
[2] https://en.ccbji.co.jp/business/installation/qr-de-kessai/
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)
Huge shout out that if you are going to be in Japan, you need one of these cards. I had thought I could just buy a two day pass in Tokyo. Which, you can, but you are almost certainly going to be limited to what routes and lines you can use, then. Which is brutal when you can't tell google maps which card you have.
https://japantravel.navitime.com/en/
Allows you to specify up front what passes you have, worked brilliantly on our honeymoon, especially when figuring out which Shinkansen reservations we needed to make.
As a rule, unless you have a very specific itinerary that involves a ton of travel within a single train company's network, passes in Japan are not worth it. This applies to both local subway passes and the sadly nerfed Japan Rail Pass for bullet trains. Even the Seishun 18 (unlimited travel for ¥2000/day, but local JR trains only) ain't what it used to be since they switched to requiring continuous days.
What happened to buying a single ticket at the station, when you need one? That's what I did when I was in Tokyo, but it was a long time ago
If you're doing any transfers it could get reasonably complicated. SUICA makes those easy, unless you need a recharge to top it up.
They're still available, but the card is more convenient(phones even more so). Tickets are also now priced slightly higher than card rides.
yeah they still have the ticket stations next to the one to refill/buy IC cards. and thanks to the 20/21 Olympics in english now too(not 2 levels of menus deep like many of them used to be) so pretty easy to do
You can do that, but the card is far more convenient and journeys are cheaper too.
tbh if you only stay in Tokyo then the combined Tokyo subway pass (Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway) is the best all around deal, you don't need anything else. ¥2000 for 72 hours
Hard disagree. It doesn't cover JR lines, and with subway fares starting from ¥160 a pop, that's a lot of riding.
When you pay with Suica, the merchant pays a transaction fee of between 2 to 3.2%, similar to a credit card.
That's surprising. IC cards are so universally and cheerfully accepted that I assumed they had no per-transaction costs. Compare the US, where merchants can be surly about card payments.
There's a mindset difference. People are more willing to pay to reduce inconvenience for customers there, whereas here the inconvenience to the merchant sometimes matters more.
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.
It's not just a patent fee, IC-card support takes special hardware that enables the low latency of the transaction. Only Android phones sold in Japan (including Pixels) get it installed at manufacturing.
All Pixels have the hardware, it's only activated on Japan-based skus. You can root and change the sku to the japanese model and it works. Allegedly the Pixel 11 is only the US sku and the international sku, so all international 11s should have it activated unless they do some serious shenanigans.
Apple Watches also support it, which can make it even more convenient in some circumstances (no need to fish anything out of pockets/bags/etc, can be used while holding other things).
The only annoying thing is, well at least in 2023 or so, was that you had to actually load the card with funds even if you had a payment method attached on the iPhone wallet. That got me once as I was tapping like normal throughout my time in Japan and ran out of funds and held up a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls (judging by their attire) who definitely laughed at me and I of course laughed at myself too.
If you’re in Japan here is a tip though. If you’re not super close to the main cities and you’re in an area without as many tourists and you see a group of Japanese school children and they all are eating something - the same thing or stuff from the same place, copy them. You won’t be disappointed. Probably. Had the best curry pan or whatever it’s called in my life following that trick.
Cringe. Cards are fun, collectable, and never run out of battery. Mine is a custom limited edition card from a Japanese chocolate factory.
https://matcha-jp.com/en/9482
Suica cards (and transit express payments in other regions) work after iPhone batteries die for a few hours.
Are you saying that an iphone can be used as a Suica card even with a dead battery? Or just that a discrete card still works when your phone is dead?
iPhones still let you use certain contactless features (like Suica) even when the battery has "run out" (ie., the main OS has shut off). The reserve battery power is enough to run Suica, CarKey support, and FindMy.
Weird romanization, wouldn't it be "suika"? There's no "ca" grapheme in common Japanese romanization systems iirc.
The article explains it is romanized that way since it comes from "card".
The best thing that you can add a Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, or TOICA card anytime to your Apple Wallet. You don't even have to be Japan. Just add transit pass and that's all, when you are there you can start using it instantly. But it works with a lot of cards all around the world (Hong Kong Octopus, Korea Tmoney, SF Clipper etc.) it's in the Wallet app itself.
I still have my Passmo card from my very first visit to Japan in 2008. I went back in 2018 and it still worked and had a balance. I used it as recently as 2025. Pretty cool!
It's a bit of a shame that the long-term "wow" factor has been somewhat negated by the new tourist cards that expire after four weeks ("Welcome Suica" and "Passmo Passport"). It looks like you can get the regular cards everywhere again if you want now, but when I visited in early 2024, there was a months-long shortage of regular cards going on,* so the airports only had those temporary cards available, meaning a whole lot of people came and left only ever getting a temporary one. (I went out of my way to get "real" permanent cards from a couple of other regions, although I regret not collecting more of them at some places I passed through.)
* I have no idea how a shortage of hardware would make it better to give out temporary, expiring cards than permanent cards, since I assume they use the same technology (and the temporary ones would cause more churn, if anything). But that was the story at the time.
Could be because of some payment regulation. IIUC prepaid payment method in Japan has to maintain a large sum of deposit to cover cost of refunds in case of insolvency situation. Balances on expired cards probably aren't used for that deposit calculation.
Also IIRC, relationship between Sony and JRE had soured few years ago and the fab in Japan that manufactured Suica cards was shut down. The contract went to Panasonic, but looks like Panasonic then sold off the smartcard unit to Nuvoton, and likely some security/nationalistic issues around that was the cause of the card supply issue.
There are really subtle cues to tell the model number(smartcards have model numbers!) and manufacturer of cards, most simply in tiny dent created by the cavity to hold the chip. Sony ones were circular and current cards are racetrack shaped.
The joys of single supplier most likely. Probably contracted to provide 1 mil a year or something then if tourism greater than that have the "disposable" ones... doesn't need to be any hardware difference though a simple time limited cards get activated with expiration date and server auto permanent inactivates them.
I was hoping the author would also discuss a bit more about the security / encryption side of it. If transactions are done only between the card and the reader, could one use a reader at home to alter the balance? If you can load the card on you phone I assume you can use the phone to read it, but that might not be true.
Anyway it was a great read! Glad to see somebody writing without (obvious) use of LLMs.
Suica was excellent when I had the chance to use it. I used the Apple Pay version and it worked flawlessly. I think I do prefer what I'm seeing more and more in the US with a tap-to-pay so I don't have to learn a new system, but Suica was so universal that I really couldn't complain. Makes sense especially with the larger diversity of digital payment methods and cash prevalence in Japan.
The really nice advantage of Suica is its speed. Yeah credit card tap to pay is alright, but it's relatively slow, taking multiple seconds.
Now QR code payment seems to be taking off in Japan, but unfortunately you can't access it as a tourist.
There are several types of QR code payments getting introduced, so it would be interesting to know the specifics. I'm only aware of using a QR code for Shinkansen tickets, which is something I have used and something a tourist can use as well. And then there's the new tickets slowly getting introduced in some areas, where the paper ticket has a QR code. I've not seen those yet, but it sounds like just an ordinary ticket otherwise.
One thing that surprised me was that certain ramen and soba shops didn’t accept cards at all and the only non-cash payment option was the IC card.
An Indian curry restaurant in "my" local Aeon only accepts PayPay or cash and that's it, so you get all kinds. Other than that I've been able to use my Suica card in surprising places.
The FeliCa NFC standard made its way into more than just transit cards in Japan. One notable user is the Amusement IC network, which lets you quickly log into arcade games across multiple manufacturers using a single card. Some implementations (Konami's e-amusement most notably) even go as far as to allow any FeliCa-compatible card or device to be linked to a profile, including transit cards, phones (with no app required!) and certain models of Sony Bluetooth earbuds which use FeliCa for quick pairing.
Wait, the balance is stored on the card? I'm fairly sure the balance is shown in the JR app too, so presumably that cannot be the case. [Update: or maybe not? I opened the app now and it's asking me to enable NFC and hold it up to the card.]
Anyway I love my Suica. I got it a good decade or more ago, I have a few thousand yen on there, and it's always ready for me when I go back to Japan. Useful on the Metro, trains and in shops. Easy to top up at the plentiful, dedicated top up machines. I also loaded Shinkansen tickets on it last time and travelled "ticketless".
The card definitely stores the balance. They probably sync the transaction records to their servers, but during the transaction the value on the card is presumed to be the truth AFAICT.
Remember when the system was designed in the early 2000s the Internet was much less available and reliable, and when so many transactions happen every day, you don't want to get thousands of passengers stuck inside a metro station only because some Wifi router was down.
This is basically a limitation of the CAP theorem, in these situations there's really no choice but to sacrifice "consistency" and settle for eventual consistency.
I think even credit card payments for transit also make that sacrifice. I had a weird experience using a Visa card to pay for a tram ride because they were promoting it and had a discount. The machine indicated success and let me through, but since I rarely used the card, somehow the payment didn't go through afterwards (the credit card was in a very weird state). If they insisted that all the payment transactions complete successfully for a transit payment, it would be too inconvenient and unreliable to use.
Yes, they do store the value. There was a blogpost posted to HN last year that discusses the cryptographic features of these cards [1,2]. It's amazing that these cards are almost solving the problem of secure digital money.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993711
[2] working link since original blog is down https://web.archive.org/web/20250517082035/https://aruarian....
Alt link because archive.org is down now: https://archive.ph/V8H5s
Op mentions that server side sync occurs outside of 200ms card/reader interaction.
I'm fairly sure the balance is shown in the app too
Can confirm that Suica shows the balance in Apple Wallet.
Suica is incredible, I remember when I first visited Japan in the 2010’s I was amazed at the speed and ubiquity, now in America that tap to pay on transit terminals are becoming more ubiquitous I feel somewhat disappointed at the “lag” I feel compared to the suica transactions
If you get a children’s card, they print your kids name right on it. It’s a nice little souvenir to keep.
There also seems to be some state logic as well. The card knows when I’m in the middle of a trip and doesn’t update the balance until a future tap when it can determine the extent of the trip (presumably). Very cool that it’s all done locally.
For me, other than the speed and convenience, I was amazed that I could use my same Suica card (on my iPhone) in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Fukuoka. Even though each region has their own card, they have mutual use in most areas.
FeliCa (or called NFC Type-F) is so great and the fact that it's dominant in Japan even made Apple to include FeliCa support on global iPhones!
> fast
What are y'all comparing it with?
I’ve tried to find videos online but they all seem… normal?
Probably compared to widespread MIFARE cards or more complex Calypso cards, which are noticeably slower (not a dealbreaker though imo).
It's normal speed for a transit card. in that you can tap and walk without slowing down.
But it's really quite fast compared to more general balance card services like NFC/tap to pay, etc.
Coming from NYC and being used to swiping once to pay a flat fair, my first Suica lesson was they vary the fair by the distance traveled. This means you have to tap in AND out of buses and subways. It was a bit embarrassing and frustrating when I almost could not board a bus in Sapporo with my friends after they all tapped in and my card was rejected. WTF? Thankfully the bus driver showed me a sign in English telling me I forgot to tap out of a station or bus. Oh. He let me board the bus with my friends. Found a train station and the woman at the counter began holding up a series of English signs so we could figure out where I forgot to tap out to ensure the correct charge is applied then sent me on my way. Turns out I goofed up transferring between the Tokyo subway and Shinkansen where I didn't tap out of the subway, got stuck, and a frustrated transit worker just opened the gate to let my dumb tourist ass through meaning I didn't tap out of the subway.
I was floored when I found out you could pay for stuff with my "Japanese MetroCard." It's quite a wonderful system.
>Every Suica card has a chip storing two things: a unique card ID, and your current balance.
This is not true. It also stores some history on where you have last entered so it can do things like transfers or block you from exiting an area that you never entered.
How is it different from the Oyster card in London?
Suica works virtually everywhere https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/suicamoney/shop.html
Imagine if you could pay with the Oyster card everywhere from Tesco to Greggs to National Rail to Uber
Actually you can find some small family shops, restaurants etc where they don't accept credit cards but Suica only
> 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. For each tap, the card and terminal mutually authenticate each other and generate a fresh encryption key to prevent spoofing.
This is the part that I'd be interested in reading more about. I'd known there must be some data on the card itself (since I can still use smartphone apps to read my cards now that I'm back in the US), but assumed there must have been some server connection too since storing anything authoritative on the card would invite tampering, and wondered why they would've bothered to store a log of recent trips on the card itself in addition to the hypothetical servers. It does make sense for latency reasons that they'd design it for the card itself to be authoritative, but I wonder how they do prevent tampering.
It's largely the same as credit cards - the card have multiple data partitions and secure read/write are encrypted. Balances are logged on both the card and the station-level servers and correctable errors and/or mid-ride updates, if any, are propagated while the user is in motion, so that they can be written upon exit.
^ that was the official explanation for a long time, but they've reportedly transitioned to more credit-card like online system with no station-level servers, and also raised fees, which was negatively received by many rail operators aside JR East itself(which owns the system). There had been few rail companies experimenting with NFC credit card rides, though I'm personally suspecting it's more of bargaining power development.open threat than those lines seriously considering a switch.
The chips in the cards are secure enough that physical tampering is extremely difficult and software tampering is difficult enough with security by obscurity + encryption - the catch is that, it turns out, early Suica cards used DES(not even 3DES it seems), and they just didn't tell anybody until those went out of circulation. Plus, the prepaid limit of 20k yen(local equivalent of $200) limits abuse potential of the system; it's not worth trying to commit blatant frauds on the train-and-sandwiches card.
>Project leader Akio Shiibashi originally set a symbolic launch target: January 1, 2001, the first day of the new millennium.
I'm getting off-topic here, but I really appreciate it when people get this date right.
> The cards have no battery and aren’t self-powered in any way. Instead, the reader on the gate emits an electromagnetic field that powers the card just long enough to complete the transaction.
Brillant!
This is how all passive RFID works. It's pretty cool. There's even systems that are both passive and active. For example, as a Disney adult, I'm familiar with their magic bands which do have a battery but also work passively. For tying ride photos automatically to you the battery matters because you're either moving too fast or are too far from the camera for passive to be consistently effective. But for simply using it as payment or a ticket you're pressing the device up against a reader and no matter how old the battery is it'll continue working.
At a first glance passive RFID would be a perfect match for ride photos, the whole mechanism is ridiculously fast so speed of the ride would not matter much (the technology works at highway speeds just fine) and can work over ~15 meters.
But there are two somewhat significant issues with the radio layer in this application: the geometry of tag antenna is somewhat critical (making it into a band would be problematic) and the back scatter is attenuated by salt water blobs (ie. people) almost perfectly.
> The cards have no battery and aren’t self-powered in any way. Instead, the reader on the gate emits an electromagnetic field that powers the card just long enough to complete the transaction.
Brillant!
AT&T showed this in television commercials back in the 1980's.
"Can you go through a toll booth without stopping? You will. And the company that will bring it to you is AT&T."
The 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Will
Lots of those things happened (maybe not faxing from the beach), but AT&T didn't bring us very many of them.