If you’ve been around Japan Rail stations in Tokyo this weekend, you may have seen the “Suica Renaissance Vol.1” posters around.
Since pretty much everyone in and around uses Suica (or PASMO) at least to ride the train – and often for much of their shopping – this seemed like something to investigate.
The Original System – Past and Present
Originally Suica was introduced to replace paper tickets. Tokyo Metro had mostly migrated from paper tickets to magnetic cards called Passnet. Passnet cards were cheap, and could only be used a limited number of times. They worked much like the old public telephone cards, and needed to be fed into the ticket gate machines.
Japan Rail had the idea to use more expensive “IC Cards” that could be read wirelessly and could be “tapped” on the ticket gate instead of being fed through them. This meant they could be used without taking them out of your wallet or case, and they could be read and processed much more quickly. The goal was a card that could be read in 0.1 seconds. That may sound incredibly short, but imagine you have 60 people in front of you trying to get out of the station. If every card took an entire second to read, people would be pausing and waiting as they exited, and it would take an entire minute of standing in line. There are often way more than 60 people, so you could imagine people needing to wait several minutes at the ticket gate. Of course you could add more ticket gates – but ticket gates take up space and are expensive. JR wanted to operate with fewer gates, so they needed a faster “ticket”. Sony came to the rescue with their IC card technology called “Felica”. JR used this as a basis and released their “Suica” branded cards around 2001.
Suica cards are encrypted and the value is literally stored in the card, which means there is no internet needed for the ticket gates to verify the balance, etc. This is one reason why Suica cards are much faster than contactless credit cards, f.e. Visa Touch, etc. – There is no need to contact any type of central server in real time.
There are basically two ways that Suica cards can work:
- There is a stored monetary value (“Stored Fare”, often abbreviated to “SF”).
- There is a stored commuter pass (The ticket allows commuting between two stations for a limited amount of time. This can be from 1 month up to 6 months.
Commuter pass usage
When you enter a train station, the ticker gate can check whether your card has a commuter pass that includes that station. If so, it beeps once, records your entrance on the card, and does not deduct any value.
When you exit at your destination, the ticket gate at that station performs a similar check. If that station is also within the range of your commuter pass, then it lets you exit – again with a single beep and without deducting any payment.
Stored Fare Usage
If you enter a train station that is not on your commuter pass (or you don’t have one), then the ticket gate emits two beeps, deducts the minimum fee, and records where you entered.
When you exit at your destination, the ticket gate there will check where you got on, calculate the remaining fare, and deduct the balance required form your card.
All of this happens lightning fast, and again without requiring central servers or the internet. This also makes it very resilient to service outages.
Shopping
JR started allowing you to use Suica to buy drinks at vending machines inside JR stations, and before long, you could use Suica to pay for everything at any store inside any JR station. Suica is also accepted today at most convenience stores and many major retailers, taxis, etc.
SF Charging and commuter pass purchase
Before you can use a Suica card, you need to charge it or purchase a commuter pass. Typically, when you buy the physical card, it costs 2,000 JPY, and it comes with a 1,500 JPY charge. 500 JPY is a “deposit” (which is the cost of the card itself). Charging can be done at ticket machines, convenience stores, and many ATMs. The maximum balance you can store on the card is 20,000 JPY, though you can charge it and use it as much as you like within a month.
You can opt to just charge the card with cash, which well let you ride anywhere you like, so long as you have enough money. You can also of course make as many purchases as you like.
If you ride the same route a lot (to school or work, for example), you can get a commuter pass, which allows you to pay a set amount for unlimited travel between two stations. This is typically significantly cheaper than paying via SF, assuming you are commuting 5 days per week.
Cross Service Compatibility
Before long, JR stuck a deal with Tokyo Metro and other train and bus companies to allow the use of Suica cards on the Metro, Keio line, and many busses. In exchange, PASMO could be used on Japan Rail trains, as well as Tokyo Monorail, etc.
Further, Japan Rail East made a similar compatibility deal with Japan Rail West, allowing the use of ICOCA in Tokyo and Suica in Kansai.
This was possible because everyone was basically using the same Felica technology from Sony.
My Suica
Since you don’t need to show any ID and can charge with cash, Suica cards are totally anonymous. There is a serial number to identify each card, but if you don’t tell JR who you are, then they don’t know. This means that unregistered cards have the same characteristics as cash. If you lose your card, anyone can pick it up and use it. This is great for privacy – but not so great if you lose your card. JR allows you to register even non-commuter cards with your name and phone number as an option, so that if you lose the card, you can report it to JR. They can deactivate and re-issue the card for you in that case.
(Although we mentioned above that a central server is essentially not necessary, there are in fact central servers that communicate with the ticket gates in the background to do things like fraud detection, statistics gathering, and blacklisted cards can be synchronized to ticket gates as well to prevent the use of lost or stolen cards).
View Card
Japan rail introduced “View Card”, which is a credit card with Suica functions. The card functions like a normal JCB or Visa card, and also as a normal Suica card. A new special feature was introduced – the card can be configured so that whenever the balance drops below a certain value, it will be charged next time it passes a JR ticket gate. For example, you can set your View Card to charge 5,000 JPY every time the value drops below 1,000. (You need to pass a ticket gate for the charge to happen, since the ticket gate is what is charging your card). You can configure the charge amount to be higher if you often use your card for things like grocery shopping, or lower if you only use it to ride the train.
JRE Points / Suica Points
JR Introduced several point systems, for Suica, atre, etc., but they have all been merged into JRE points now. Basically, you can earn points from shopping in atre and other shops inside JR, points for paying for things with View Card, points for paying via Suica, etc. These points can be used to make purchases, or to charge your Suica. This is one of the better point services, since the points are as good as cash, and can effectively be used wherever Suica can be used.
Mobile Suica
Even before smart phones became popular, JR introduced the “Mobile Suica” app for Japanese feature phones. This app required that you have a Japanese phone that contained the hardware to emulate Felica cards, and as far as ticket gates know, such phones are just normal Suica cards.
Once you installed the Mobile Suica app, you could charge the virtual Suica card on your phone at the Convenience store and some ATMs (Some ticket machines too, more recently) – but now there was a new feature – you could charge the virtual Suica card via credit card as well. (The number of cards that could be used was originally very limited since obviously JR wasn’t going to pay fees to credit card companies for this).
This meant you could use your phone for shopping and riding the train, and charge it without carrying any cash.
Once Japanese companies like Sharp, Kyocera, Fujitsu and Sony started making Android phones, JR developed an Android version of Mobile Suica – Note that this was long before Google Wallet was released.
The first iPhones released in Japan could not support Mobile Suica since Apple refused to implement Felica technology. After Samsung, Google, and others started releasing phones supporting Felica (Now branded as “NFC Type F” for international use), Apple finally caved in since their market share would be limited in Japan otherwise.
One of the interesting features of Mobile Suica is that you can have multiple cards in one phone. Recent phones have support for 5 or so cards, which can be a mix of Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, etc.
Finally, there are numerous apps that will allow you to read Suica (and similar) cards using a phone. You can see the recent travel, charge, and shopping history. Note that shopping history only shows amounts, not store names or locations.
Current Limitations
Since you can only store a maximum of 20,000 JPY, basically Suica can’t be used for any purchases over that amount.
Since you need to charge before you can spend, it can be a minor pain for mobile Suica users, and a major pain for physical card users if they want to buy something over the card’s value. (I also see this as an advantage, since it is good for budgeting).
In order to accept Suica payments, you need to have the proper equipment. There are no private person-to-person payments.
In order to use Suica, you need to have a phone which has the proper hardware, or a physical card.
The New system – Suica Renaissance Vol.1
Basically, JR plans to introduce numerous new features. It isn’t clear whether some old features will disappear or not. For example, whether IC cards will be supported forever, whether Suica will remain anonymous, etc.
Local Services
- Extension of Compatibility – JR wants to leverage Suica to other transportation providers such as ride sharing, on demand busses, etc.
- JR wants to let you link your MyNumber card to allow additional services (presumably from local governments).
- Let you track family members (There is already a service called Mamorail, which can send email notifications when your children enter/exit ticket gates – so this could be an extension of that).
- Allow you to accept payments from localities. This may refer to municipal payments.
Payment Services
- Revitalize localities through utilization of location limited value – I think this means creating balances like “Yokohama Money”, which can only be used in that area.
- Allowing person to person payments for things like new years presents, etc.
- Allowing purchases over 20,000 JPY. (It was mentioned that this would be through QR Codes, which is interesting – so they would have a new feature in their app which looks somewhat like PayPay and similar apps).
Transport Services
- Ability to ride the train without tapping
- It will be possible to use Suica anywhere within Japan Rail East area by using location information. (This implies that they will somehow use GPS information to let you pay with Suica even at stations that don’t have Suica compatible gates yet).
- Ability to pay afterwards instead of charging ahead of time.
Note: It seems like these might not work with the current IC card setup.
Exceeding the Ordinary – Other Changes
- JR says it will move from an IC Card based model to a central server based model. They don’t give details on how they would make this transition while still keeping the current response time and reliability. Since that seems impossible, it may well in fact be some sort of hybrid model.
- Travel Subscriptions that are more flexible than the current commuter passes. For example, by paying 3,000 JPY per month, you could get a 50% discount for travel not only to your main office, but satellite offices and personal weekend excursions. Also mentioned are various other perks like discounts to certain attractions, etc.
- By changing to central server architecture they will enable “walk through” gates where you won’t need to “tap” your phone or card, and use location info to allow usage of Suica at stations without IC card compatible gates. I remember a few years back about walk-through gates being possible with the current IC card technology just by using more powerful signals and sensitive antennas.
- Service Area Expansion – They said it will be usable in Nagano, Sendai, Aomori, Akita, etc. by 2027, in such a way that you would be able to ride from Ueno to Sendai. Also, even in areas not currently supported by Suica, you will be able to buy a “Smart Phone Commuter Pass”. (This would obviously require a smart phone with Mobile Suica, and they mentioned it would require displaying the screen). It’s mentioned they foresee using location information in the future.
- Post-Pay – No need to charge ahead of time. It is said that you will be able to link a credit card or bank account to allow post-payment. I don’t see this as a big change to how View Card works now. Technically, it is pre-paid, but when you pass the ticket gate, it charges and then takes the minimum payment – and the actual cash payment happens later, when you get your credit card statement.
- Payment Enhancement – It is said that by Fall of 2026, the mobile Suica app will receive a major update, allowing payments over 20,000 JPY via “Code Payment” (I assume QR code?), and the ability to transfer money between family and friends. The same update will include coupons, local value (region specific money), and more. Their intention is to make it a universal payment service in Japan (more than it already is).
- Region specific services like local gift certificate issuing and usage, etc.
- Fancy features using location sensing – for example, you book a taxi to pick you up “when you arrive” at a certain station. JR coordinates this to make sure a taxi is actually waiting for you when you arrive at the destination, since they know where you are. They are also planning to allow service reviews.
- Special “Welcome Suica Mobile” for Tourists. I suppose this makes sense given the recent increase in tourists, and lack of Suica card stock. This has already launched in March, 2025, in fact.
- Proving all this technology to other transportation vendors. They discuss a commuter pass service they started with Tokyo Monorail in November of 2024, plans to roll out things more, and then eventually overseas.
- They have a list of their goals, divided into what they plan to have complete by 2028, and which things will be done “within 10 years”.
Thoughts
Obviously some people at JR have big plans – but they are biting off so much at once. I think the App update will happen, and they will be able to easily pull off QR Code payments and person to person transfers. I think they could steal market share from PayPay since they will offer essentially the current features of Suica plus those of PayPay as well – but these features would presumably not work with physical cards, only the mobile app.
Things like regional currencies seem fairly easy too.
Using location information and such seems a little more pie in the sky. I don’t think most people will want to give the Suica app access to their location information all the time, and even if they do, how would it know when you are riding the train as opposed to just say, riding bike along the train tracks?
It will be interesting to see what happens!
Link
https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2024/20241210_ho03.pdf
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