> 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.
So, do girls still flash the camera at other "ride photo" opportunities? Does Disneyland have mammary-recognition AI that automatically suppresses boob exposure on ride photos?
> 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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I imagine there are only maybe three people as stupid as me to try this, but just in case: it works fine when the battery runs out; but it does _not_ work during the OS update process.
Interestingly, but not exactly related - the OS update process will not start if you're connected to CarPlay. Probably to avoid automatic updates from triggering when you plug it in to charge in the car.
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.
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.
That also happens with Clipper Card in the Bay Area. Happened to me a couple of weeks ago on BART. I wonder if all transit cards need to be loaded with money when used on iPhone. I remember having a Clipper Card with autoload and that would work just fine without balance.
Yeah, I particularly like London’s implementation (I moved away just short of a decade ago - might have changed since) where if you just use the same card you don’t need a pass because there are daily/weekly/monthly maximums and you travel for free afterwards. Very good system. But it is slower that Suica/Pasmo.
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).
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.
And there are several calculators online where you can punch in your itinerary and it will tell you the best pass to buy, if any.
On my last trip it only made sense to buy a pass for a single ~4 day segment that included two long Shinkansen rides plus an expensive sight-seeing bus.
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
If you do 5 Metro journeys per day—which is very reasonable if you're a tourist—at the bare minimum of ¥160 per trip, you would save money by buying the Tokyo Metro Ticket for 72h.
The Tokyo Metro Ticket (24h/48h/72h) is very convenient, though. I just looked at the prices and the longest one went from ¥1500 to ¥2000 since November 2025 but I think it's still very valuable, especially if you've never been to Tokyo and want to travel between a lot of places.
JR is better if you go to the countryside of Tokyo but for the city itself Metro is much more convenient, IMO. Perhaps it depends on the station you commute to, though.
When I travel to Tokyo, I usually do at the very least 4 Metro trips per day, and let's say the minimum fare is ¥178,it would come down to ¥712 daily.
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.
This simply isn't true, or you'd see these places accept credit cards.
The most prevalent mom & pop approach is either cash only or it's cash and PayPay. You may also see cash, PayPay and IC. PayPay, at first, had extremely low fees and an army of sales people that targeted mom & pops, pushing the low fees. They've since then increased fees as their saturation has increased, and now you'll see shops adding things like setapay or hachipay (which are annoyingly ku specific payment methods that are very low fee).
Larger businesses are owned by massive conglomerates, or are housed in shopping complexes owned by massive conglomerates that require them to accept more payment methods.
Like all businesses, they aim to reduce their costs and increase their margins. They aren't adding payment methods to reduce your inconvenience, unless they think doing so will increase their volume enough to offset the fees.
Attitudes depends on margin and cash-handling costs.
And prior to a 2013 class-action lawsuit that changed the situation, merchants were widely banned by payment processors from charging credit card transaction fees. But now many low margin businesses pass along the cost: for instance, it is common at gas stations, and almost universal at truck stops across the US. And some businesses have long opted for minimum transaction amount for credit purchases.
On the other hand, in places where the target clientele is fully-banked and handling cash is more costly, some businesses find it advantageous to opt solely for card transactions: for instance, an upscale establishment in a city. They may have higher margins that can easily eat the cost, and being card-only also decreases the attractiveness to robbers and discourages unbanked patrons. It has also been criticized for being discriminatory in the same way.
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 get the hang of it.
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.
But yeah I wouldn’t bother with it unless I was dying of thirst and I had no other payment options available.
30 seconds is the complete user flow to open the app, select a drink, approve payment with face id, and dispense the drink. Maybe a few seconds longer in the end than paying with Suica, but pretty negligible.
And a lot of coke machines in train stations, service areas, etc also accept Suica if you prefer (but then you don't get the stamps).
Typically the machines I see which only accept the Coke ON app are in more rural areas that traditionally would have only accepted cash. And I much prefer the app to cash.
Most Coke On machines do support Suica/Felica but you have to press IC on the blinking pad. The problem is that the pad doesn't seem like a touchscreen and it can be difficult to precisely tap. However Suntory does have app-only machines now.
It's not really mentioned in the article, but Suntory and transit operators out in Hiroshima etc. are turning away from Felica simply because the licensing fee is too high for them. That's also why Samsung and Google don't enable it on non-Japanese phones. Sony and JR missed the part where they have to generous first to eliminate all competition before jacking up fees, and now they're getting eaten by QR payment and Visa.
> 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.
> 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.
I don't think a limit on the value stored on the card limits the potential of fraud. I'm not imagining someone would load tens of thousands of yen onto their card. I'm more imagining someone setting the card to have enough money to get through the gate, every time they want to use the train. I'd agree fare is cheap enough that it's probably not worth someone's time to figure that out, but it would add up over time if someone did it (and especially if the method for doing so got passed around).
I also understand that there's two-way communication with one-time/expiring keys that would prevent a simple replay attack from working. Really just interested in understanding the entire mechanism in more detail! It gets handwaved as just "encryption" in a lot of discussions, probably due to a combination of intentional obscurity (like you mentioned) and it just not being super interesting or relevant to most contexts.
(Also, good point that the servers would still allow significant deviations to be caught and the card rejected/flagged in the system-- I've also seen that concept mentioned elsewhere after trying to research it a bit more.)
I remember the stored-value transit cards in Sweden in the 90's/00's. They were just magstripe cards with the value on it and a basic checksum value. It was not hard to figure out how to rewrite the card with a higher value, or just clone it, value and all, onto a separate card. No online component, as mobile networks weren't great when the system was designed.
They'd download their transaction logs out of the buses every night and do a reconciliation. If they found a card where the value went up or had impossible travel times, they'd look at the travel routes/dates and wait around on the "hackers" commute route with a police officer until they showed up. Very manual.
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.
Am in Japan now and can confirm: you got a broken one. It's magically fast, everywhere. I prefer it even at the 7-eleven. Why wait the interminable 2 seconds for your Visa 'cardo touchy' to work when Suica is literally instant.
Reading this article it makes sense why it feels too fast to be real, especially when using a powered phone. The things are already communicating as my hand is moving towards the reader. By the time it gets there, it's happened.
I spent 2 weeks in Japan and used the Suica card near-daily in multiple cities. Sometimes it wouldn't even activate until I tapped it again, other times there was a delay.
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.
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 think the reason some people are complaining about the Suica stuff nowadays is that since... I think 2021 there's been stock shortages so getting a physical Suica involves going to specific places (I think at airports for example?) to get one. There's also now this "Welcome Suica" that you can get but it only works in certain areas of the country (so much for the IC standard...)
I believe you can't get a physical one from the ticket machines anymore unless you are getting a commuter pass, but I might be wrong.
Yeah, at airports (where most travellers arrive). I recently arrived at Narita airport, you go down to the trains and there's an office you go to where a human being spends a couple minutes helping you get a Suica. It's great because you can also ask any questions you have about usage at the same time.
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.
I heard from friends that the physical Suica card tends to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't difficult 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.
Well you can get it only in some kind of machines, and you need to pay it cash. Also you need to use cash to charge it, and you can charge it minimum by 1000 or 500 yen at a time depending on the station, not less.
The digital version only works on iPhones, since Android phones sold outside Japan doesn't have the Felica chip, or if they have it (e.g. Google Pixel) is disabled in EU/US firmware because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay a fee for every phone to Sony for something 99.999% of people that will never travel to Japan would use.
> Well you can get it only in some kind of machines, and you need to pay it cash. Also you need to use cash to charge it
Totally forgot about that aspect, you are 100% correct.
I remember traveling with my friend who had a physical card, and more than once we had to reroute to a nearby kiosk and wait in line, so he could recharge the balance on the card. Apple Wallet felt more convenient, because recharging it was as simple as picking the amount to recharge and hitting "submit."
Many Android phones have the hardware, regardless of where they are sold, but it's disabled for non-Japanese SKUs so the manufacturer can avoid paying the licensing fees for it.
Thanks for bringing this up, I actually had no idea it was simply disabled, and assumed it was simply not included at all (for whichever miniscule savings it would bring).
Your explanation makes more sense, because it is definitely cheaper/easier to just disable (but include) that hardware to avoid licensing fees (as opposed to having an additional factory manufacturing line just to produce the SKUs that physically exclude that hardware).
nah, you walk to a machine at the airport and get the tourist one.
I had to get 4 as I was traveling with kids who don't own phones and could get cheaper rates, took a few minutes, you waste a few yen but get to keep the souvenir.
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 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.
Thats interesting, but it seems most subway systems are still QR code based? Anyways, I’ll try to see if I can get that to work next time I go to China.
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 it 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.
Definitely slower to use a card or your phone in London.
I remember when they first allowed card use more than a decade ago and it broke the flow quite a bit at rush hour as people were so used to the Oyster card's timing that they'd run into the back of people using cards or people using cards would run into the gate as it had not opened as quickly as they were used to. Quite a bit of commentary around it during that time:
Something that is amazing about Sydney’s system though is that as a visitor to Sydney you can likely use the train system without needing an app or any sign up. Just use your credit or debit card via nfc on your phone (or the physical one)
I was honestly so impressed by that, you mean I can just tap on? Don’t need to stand here outside the gates for 10 minutes entering my info into a frustrating app? Don’t need to buy a $10 card, only $5 of which I’ll ever use? Even with suica being pretty easy to set up on iPhone, this is definitely something Sydney’s got over Japan’s system.
Yep, and it's increasingly common around the world. In Australia, it's also fully rolled out in Brisbane and I believe it's just about finished being rolled out in Melbourne too.
New York and Seattle both have the same thing and it's wonderful. Google Wallet even allows the user to set it to not require an unlock for transit transactions.
Many systems within Japan are also setup to accept Tap-to-pay/PayWave/contactless (though JR East is a notable exception), but many locals just use Suica/Pasmo because it's the much _faster_.
Meanwhile in another city not far away, the cards are instant but the gate has to think for a while. It's inconsistent too, so you inevitably run into it.
I feel either the gate is making international round trip calls through the internet to some SaaS service. Our it's actually doing a face scan and lookup.
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.
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 there's another 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 :-/
This doesn't especially bother me, but it is a kinda funny workflow to go to an ATM to withdraw cash (with your bank card) only to immediately put it back into the machine (to charge your IC card).
It was funny during Expo in Osaka on the massive metro station - you could just zip in with the suica, while the less knowledgeable foreign tourists would form long queues in front of the special gates where they could pay by a payment card, which were glacialy slow in comparison.
For a long time in Japan, the physical cards were limited because of IC inventory shortage. There was a big push to get people to use their phones during this time.
Also, travelers beware: some of the special "Suica" sold at Haneda (and maybe Narita, too?) expires and is completely dead after 30 days, even if it has a balance. I found this out the hard way. Buy a proper Suica at Shinagawa or another non-airport station.
That’s the red “Welcome Suica”. Green or any other IC card at any other location like ICOCA don’t expire functionally ever. The stated time on some cards is 10 years since last use, but they’re practically infinite in that they can be used even after this point.
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.
FWIW on Android, Google Wallet tells me "Transit Cards: These cards never require verification", and indeed I can just wave my phone at the terminal without unlocking it.
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.
The story makes clear that constraints matter. Product teams build against specified constraints. If latency isn’t one of them, they’re going to sacrifice it if it helps meet the defined requirements more quickly and cost-effectively.
Every time I see a shoddy piece of work, I know which constraint was sacrificed.
> People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
In Prague city transit does not have limiting gates. If you bought unlimited ticket, you just walk in bus/tram/metro and that is it. No touching, scanning, showing, nothing. Maybe once a month (or even rarer) you might encounter a patrolling controller who would ask you to show your ticket, but that's it.
And that's the difference. IIRC, you have to periodically top up your Suica card with money which then gets deducted from the balance each time you use it.
In Europe, there is no such thing - sure, you can buy a lot of single ride tickets and then use them when you need to, but you have to stamp the ticket when you start each ride, which does seem a little more inconvenient.
The European public transport system is not some centralised system that should be generalised like this.
The system in the Netherlands has worked like Suica for years (but without the extremely fast card reading unfortunately). You simply tap on with your public transport card or bank/credit card and tap out when you get off. Subscriptions, automatic/manual top ups, it's all possible.
In London you can use a contactless (UK) bank card, and it works just like the "Osyter Card". I think that started around 2016. For journeys on the TFL network you should get billed the lowest fare, as long as you touch at the right points when changing.
I don't think it's fair to conflagrate "Europe" as a single entity. From what I'm reading and my distant recollection in London you top up your Oyster card and pay a fare according to the zone your travelling to. Metro is gated. In Paris your load up tickets in your Navigo pass and pay a flat rate every time you take the metro or RER. It's also gated. In most (all ?) Swiss cities you don't have any card to charge and have to get a ticket for every travel (the amount depending on how many zones you cross); however there's an app that let you get your location at the start of your travel and end of your travel and automatically charges you the correct fare. There's no gates.
There are no gates anywhere in Switzerland, but one will encounter patrollers much more frequently in the trains (seldom in the trams/buses). I was flabbergasted by the low-trust look of the 2.5-meters high gates in the Paris subway
I guess this is worth an explanation: in many European intra-city subways/trams, you're supposed to buy a ticket and then insert it into a "validator" machine that stamps current time. The validator is around where ticket gates would be, but much fewer in numbers, installed on random locations or on railings. Being on a train without the stamped ticket is equivalent to jumping a fence.
A lot of European folks seem to have positive experiences with the validator system as something convenient, less intrusive and high bandwidth, overall superior, but personally I doubt it scales out to scale and transit models of places like Shinjuku. Most rides in Tokyo commuter rails are point to point and Japanese commuters go through gate like a marching army, so it means temporary riders has to disrupt the march to get to the validator, and also a single validator in the middle of the gate area isn't going to meet demands but increasing the number of the machines kills the benefits.
btw: JRE is actually doing experiments with more modernized touch-free gates, one based on facial recognition a la Minority Report, and another based on UWB radio gadget added to phones. It is speculated that UWB is likely the intended path forward.
In Vienna they don't have gates at all or even much indication where gates supposed to be. My first visit I accidentally didn't pay for my ticket - I'm used to ticket machines being near the gates but I couldn't spot any. I also arrived on a train so I thought that since there was no gates or visible ticket machines between train and subway, maybe my train ticket is valid for a subway trip (happens in some places) but it was not the case.
Pleasant alternative from a lot of US transit systems, eg BART int eh Bay Area which is the most customer-hostile service I'eve ever used. giant gates that seem right out of a dystopian science-fiction movie, an achingly slow card readers which absolutely force you to break stride no matter how ready you are. Add in the extremely unhelpful station attendants and you've got a recipe for a public transport service that people actively avoid if they possibly can. Then they turn around and ask for voters to approve extra tax money. I'm convinced none of the people on the BART board actually use the service.
There's a big difference in antisocial behaviour and visible mental health issues between Tokyo and San Francisco.
"San Francisco’s BART found that systemwide crime fell 41 percent after new gates were installed. Even more impressively, across the ten stations with the most corrective maintenance needs, staff time spent on in-system maintenance fell 96 percent, which suggests that fare evaders also cause most unreported crime, like littering, vandalism, and graffiti."
From the underlying press release (emphasis added):
BART PD boosted the visible safety presence in the system by doubling officer presence systemwide and ensuring police are riding trains more. This approach is strengthened by BART’s ongoing use of unarmed Crisis Intervention Specialists, Transit Ambassadors, Fare Inspectors, and Community Service Officers.
Safety efforts were also bolstered by the installation of 715 new fare gates at all 50 stations, a project completed in August 2025, four months ahead of schedule.
More to the point, mone of that is relevant to the fact that the giant gates impose a burden on lawful users as well as any criminals they might deter, nor is it relevant to the extremely slow performance of the automated gates themselves. The experience of riding BART sucks for law-abiding paying passengers.
It reminds me of that oft touted experiment where a light lit up within some number of milliseconds of a person hitting a button, and people perceive it as happening before they hit the button.
The Japanese gate machines with tickets are even more impressive because they're mechanical, and super fast. You can put a single tickets or 2, insert in any direction, and in a few seconds the tickets is out at the other end of the machine so you don't have to stop walking at a fast pace.
The inside of these machines are a sight to behold. Even more than 2 tickets are supported, including different sizes, and they're always sorted and re-oriented properly when they come out.
> Every Suica card has a chip storing two things: a unique card ID, and your current balance. Both of those live on the card itself, rather than a central server.
When you remove the network and run locally, you’d expect it to be amazingly fast.
But it’s also effectively physical cash. And that has many downsides as well.
Wait, the balance is stored on the card? I'm fairly sure the balance is shown in the app too, so presumably that cannot be the case.
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.
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.
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.
Some digital payment terminals don’t have full-time internet connections today, dial-up or not… think, handheld terminal in areas of poor wireless signal.
But yeah, even settling up at the end of the day with those terminals is still way faster than settling up carbon copies via mail.
The original Dutch system used a very similar approach: the card not only stores the balance, but also a history of taps, and information about the travel products. Your travel history is available on a website, but new trips are only shown after a terminal has asynchronously uploaded your new data.
Fixed terminals (like at a train station) near-instantly upload it, movable terminals (like in a bus) have a bit of a delay and sometimes only upload when the bus arrives back at the depot. It is possible to add new travel products or balance from an app / website, but you have to visit a special "pick-up terminal" to update the card.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It also allows for easy in-transit checking: anyone on the "secure" side of the fare gates must be in possession of a card whose last transaction was a tap-in. There's no chance of a cheeky "it wasn't me who jumped the turnstyles - it was my lookalike", and you can have roaming groups of ticket validators who board random carriages and check everyone.
99% sure you passed through a transfer gate in Tokyo station that requires you to produce two "tickets" (physical or virtual)—one for subway and one for Shinkansen. Always plenty confusing. I have to hold my phone (Suica app) and an EX card (Shinkansen card) together for a dual-NFC tap. I always forget one or the other.
That tap in and out system causes unexpected issues sometimes. Many subway stations in Tokyo have different extrances for different directions that are not connected underground. Once I entered such station for a train that went in a wrong way and when I tried to exit gates didn't let me. It was unmanned station so it took me a while to find an intercom and explain my issue to a person so they can unblock me.
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.
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.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 172 ms ] threadBrillant!
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200807112208/https://www.latim...
So, do girls still flash the camera at other "ride photo" opportunities? Does Disneyland have mammary-recognition AI that automatically suppresses boob exposure on ride photos?
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."
Lots of those things happened (maybe not faxing from the beach), but AT&T didn't bring us very many of them.
* 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.
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.
iPhones have it worldwide, so a visitor to Japan can use Apple Pay to stand up a card and fund it.
https://matcha-jp.com/en/9482
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.
Or you have a contortionist spirit in you, whatever works :)
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.
On my last trip it only made sense to buy a pass for a single ~4 day segment that included two long Shinkansen rides plus an expensive sight-seeing bus.
JR is better if you go to the countryside of Tokyo but for the city itself Metro is much more convenient, IMO. Perhaps it depends on the station you commute to, though.
When I travel to Tokyo, I usually do at the very least 4 Metro trips per day, and let's say the minimum fare is ¥178,it would come down to ¥712 daily.
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.
The most prevalent mom & pop approach is either cash only or it's cash and PayPay. You may also see cash, PayPay and IC. PayPay, at first, had extremely low fees and an army of sales people that targeted mom & pops, pushing the low fees. They've since then increased fees as their saturation has increased, and now you'll see shops adding things like setapay or hachipay (which are annoyingly ku specific payment methods that are very low fee).
Larger businesses are owned by massive conglomerates, or are housed in shopping complexes owned by massive conglomerates that require them to accept more payment methods.
Like all businesses, they aim to reduce their costs and increase their margins. They aren't adding payment methods to reduce your inconvenience, unless they think doing so will increase their volume enough to offset the fees.
I rarely encounter this - I find it far more common to see places that won’t accept cash at all (even small businesses like food trucks).
And prior to a 2013 class-action lawsuit that changed the situation, merchants were widely banned by payment processors from charging credit card transaction fees. But now many low margin businesses pass along the cost: for instance, it is common at gas stations, and almost universal at truck stops across the US. And some businesses have long opted for minimum transaction amount for credit purchases.
https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/03/N...
https://wpcdn.us-east-1.vip.tn-cloud.net/www.41nbc.com/conte...
On the other hand, in places where the target clientele is fully-banked and handling cash is more costly, some businesses find it advantageous to opt solely for card transactions: for instance, an upscale establishment in a city. They may have higher margins that can easily eat the cost, and being card-only also decreases the attractiveness to robbers and discourages unbanked patrons. It has also been criticized for being discriminatory in the same way.
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.
Like....somehow they turned a sub 1ms operation into a 4 minute 32 second one. It boggles the mind
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.
But yeah I wouldn’t bother with it unless I was dying of thirst and I had no other payment options available.
[1] https://szabo.jp/2021/05/16/coke-on/
[2] https://en.ccbji.co.jp/business/installation/qr-de-kessai/
And a lot of coke machines in train stations, service areas, etc also accept Suica if you prefer (but then you don't get the stamps).
Typically the machines I see which only accept the Coke ON app are in more rural areas that traditionally would have only accepted cash. And I much prefer the app to cash.
It's not really mentioned in the article, but Suntory and transit operators out in Hiroshima etc. are turning away from Felica simply because the licensing fee is too high for them. That's also why Samsung and Google don't enable it on non-Japanese phones. Sony and JR missed the part where they have to generous first to eliminate all competition before jacking up fees, and now they're getting eaten by QR payment and Visa.
JFYI, over 50% of payments in Japan in 2026 are digital now. So not as high as other markets but certainly much less paper money than pre-pandemic.
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2026/0331_005.html
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.
^ 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.
I don't think a limit on the value stored on the card limits the potential of fraud. I'm not imagining someone would load tens of thousands of yen onto their card. I'm more imagining someone setting the card to have enough money to get through the gate, every time they want to use the train. I'd agree fare is cheap enough that it's probably not worth someone's time to figure that out, but it would add up over time if someone did it (and especially if the method for doing so got passed around).
I also understand that there's two-way communication with one-time/expiring keys that would prevent a simple replay attack from working. Really just interested in understanding the entire mechanism in more detail! It gets handwaved as just "encryption" in a lot of discussions, probably due to a combination of intentional obscurity (like you mentioned) and it just not being super interesting or relevant to most contexts.
(Also, good point that the servers would still allow significant deviations to be caught and the card rejected/flagged in the system-- I've also seen that concept mentioned elsewhere after trying to research it a bit more.)
They'd download their transaction logs out of the buses every night and do a reconciliation. If they found a card where the value went up or had impossible travel times, they'd look at the travel routes/dates and wait around on the "hackers" commute route with a police officer until they showed up. Very manual.
Reading this article it makes sense why it feels too fast to be real, especially when using a powered phone. The things are already communicating as my hand is moving towards the reader. By the time it gets there, it's happened.
Stunningly good.
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.
Anyway, that problem is long gone.
I believe you can't get a physical one from the ticket machines anymore unless you are getting a commuter pass, but I might be wrong.
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.
The digital version only works on iPhones, since Android phones sold outside Japan doesn't have the Felica chip, or if they have it (e.g. Google Pixel) is disabled in EU/US firmware because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay a fee for every phone to Sony for something 99.999% of people that will never travel to Japan would use.
Totally forgot about that aspect, you are 100% correct.
I remember traveling with my friend who had a physical card, and more than once we had to reroute to a nearby kiosk and wait in line, so he could recharge the balance on the card. Apple Wallet felt more convenient, because recharging it was as simple as picking the amount to recharge and hitting "submit."
Your explanation makes more sense, because it is definitely cheaper/easier to just disable (but include) that hardware to avoid licensing fees (as opposed to having an additional factory manufacturing line just to produce the SKUs that physically exclude that hardware).
https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/welcomesuica....
Maybe you can refill it with cash? Or did I have to buy it with cash? and when you leave everything expires.
I had to get 4 as I was traveling with kids who don't own phones and could get cheaper rates, took a few minutes, you waste a few yen but get to keep the souvenir.
Definitely better than the QR codes used by China.
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.
I remember when they first allowed card use more than a decade ago and it broke the flow quite a bit at rush hour as people were so used to the Oyster card's timing that they'd run into the back of people using cards or people using cards would run into the gate as it had not opened as quickly as they were used to. Quite a bit of commentary around it during that time:
https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/2zc104/that_extra_s...
I was honestly so impressed by that, you mean I can just tap on? Don’t need to stand here outside the gates for 10 minutes entering my info into a frustrating app? Don’t need to buy a $10 card, only $5 of which I’ll ever use? Even with suica being pretty easy to set up on iPhone, this is definitely something Sydney’s got over Japan’s system.
Meanwhile Hobart and Darwin are free PT right now.
I feel either the gate is making international round trip calls through the internet to some SaaS service. Our it's actually doing a face scan and lookup.
People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
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.
Also, travelers beware: some of the special "Suica" sold at Haneda (and maybe Narita, too?) expires and is completely dead after 30 days, even if it has a balance. I found this out the hard way. Buy a proper Suica at Shinagawa or another non-airport station.
Because it's not the easiest setting to find: Settings/Wallet & Apple Pay/Express Transit Card
Every time I see a shoddy piece of work, I know which constraint was sacrificed.
In Prague city transit does not have limiting gates. If you bought unlimited ticket, you just walk in bus/tram/metro and that is it. No touching, scanning, showing, nothing. Maybe once a month (or even rarer) you might encounter a patrolling controller who would ask you to show your ticket, but that's it.
Makes for such a smooth journey as most people are doing the right thing.
And that's the difference. IIRC, you have to periodically top up your Suica card with money which then gets deducted from the balance each time you use it.
In Europe, there is no such thing - sure, you can buy a lot of single ride tickets and then use them when you need to, but you have to stamp the ticket when you start each ride, which does seem a little more inconvenient.
The European public transport system is not some centralised system that should be generalised like this. The system in the Netherlands has worked like Suica for years (but without the extremely fast card reading unfortunately). You simply tap on with your public transport card or bank/credit card and tap out when you get off. Subscriptions, automatic/manual top ups, it's all possible.
A lot of European folks seem to have positive experiences with the validator system as something convenient, less intrusive and high bandwidth, overall superior, but personally I doubt it scales out to scale and transit models of places like Shinjuku. Most rides in Tokyo commuter rails are point to point and Japanese commuters go through gate like a marching army, so it means temporary riders has to disrupt the march to get to the validator, and also a single validator in the middle of the gate area isn't going to meet demands but increasing the number of the machines kills the benefits.
btw: JRE is actually doing experiments with more modernized touch-free gates, one based on facial recognition a la Minority Report, and another based on UWB radio gadget added to phones. It is speculated that UWB is likely the intended path forward.
Only Japan is on another level
https://www.sony.co.jp/en/Products/felica/NFC
There's a big difference in antisocial behaviour and visible mental health issues between Tokyo and San Francisco.
"San Francisco’s BART found that systemwide crime fell 41 percent after new gates were installed. Even more impressively, across the ten stations with the most corrective maintenance needs, staff time spent on in-system maintenance fell 96 percent, which suggests that fare evaders also cause most unreported crime, like littering, vandalism, and graffiti."
https://www.city-journal.org/article/transit-crime-fare-gate...
From the underlying press release (emphasis added): BART PD boosted the visible safety presence in the system by doubling officer presence systemwide and ensuring police are riding trains more. This approach is strengthened by BART’s ongoing use of unarmed Crisis Intervention Specialists, Transit Ambassadors, Fare Inspectors, and Community Service Officers.
Safety efforts were also bolstered by the installation of 715 new fare gates at all 50 stations, a project completed in August 2025, four months ahead of schedule.
More to the point, mone of that is relevant to the fact that the giant gates impose a burden on lawful users as well as any criminals they might deter, nor is it relevant to the extremely slow performance of the automated gates themselves. The experience of riding BART sucks for law-abiding paying passengers.
It reminds me of that oft touted experiment where a light lit up within some number of milliseconds of a person hitting a button, and people perceive it as happening before they hit the button.
https://i.redd.it/karotzuqw8uf1.jpeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NyoXbsS1Jo
When you remove the network and run locally, you’d expect it to be amazingly fast.
But it’s also effectively physical cash. And that has many downsides as well.
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.
Can confirm that Suica shows the balance in Apple Wallet.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43993711
[2] working link since original blog is down https://web.archive.org/web/20250517082035/https://aruarian....
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.
But yeah, even settling up at the end of the day with those terminals is still way faster than settling up carbon copies via mail.
Fixed terminals (like at a train station) near-instantly upload it, movable terminals (like in a bus) have a bit of a delay and sometimes only upload when the bus arrives back at the depot. It is possible to add new travel products or balance from an app / website, but you have to visit a special "pick-up terminal" to update the card.
This is also put in use in many karaoke joints to save a list of your favorite songs/song history.
I was floored when I found out you could pay for stuff with my "Japanese MetroCard." It's quite a wonderful system.
What are y'all comparing it with?
I’ve tried to find videos online but they all seem… normal?
Anyway it was a great read! Glad to see somebody writing without (obvious) use of LLMs.
[edit] Looks like this finally became public recently https://www.techtimes.com/articles/321138/20260721/japan-con...
I'm getting off-topic here, but I really appreciate it when people get this date right.
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)