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Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

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Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#51

Post by numpad0 »

jacobgkau wrote: post #18
trzy wrote: post #7

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 whol…

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#52

Post by qurren »

polishdude20 wrote: post #39
cptcobalt wrote: post #20

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.

The card might be fast but getting one as a tourist is kind of a hassle

Really? In 2009 I just bought one at a vending machine, but I haven't really explored Japan since then

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#53

Post by HaloZero »

polishdude20 wrote: post #39
cptcobalt wrote: post #20

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.

The card might be fast but getting one as a tourist is kind of a hassle

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#54

Post by ericmay »

ben1040 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#55

Post by quinncom »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #44
rwmj wrote: post #21

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…

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

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#56

Post by rozenmd »

cptcobalt wrote: post #20

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.

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#57

Post by pknomad »

cptcobalt wrote: post #20

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#58

Post by cosmic_cheese »

ben1040 wrote: post #11

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.

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).

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#59

Post by numpad0 »

jacobgkau wrote: post #16

> 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…

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.

Re: Suica, Japan's First IC Transit Card

#60

Post by skiman10 »

ink_13 wrote: post #29
ben1040 wrote: post #11

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.
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