Suica

Overview

Suica is JR East Japan Railway Company TYO: 9020 Japanese rail transit + retail prepaid IC card + Japan's largest transit + retail prepaid IC card by issuance + FeliCa contactless smart card technology + ~100M+ Japanese Suica cards + Mobile Suica via Apple Pay + Google Pay + Wear OS [1, jp-cro].

History

Nov 18 2001 — Suica launched by JR East Japan Railway Company as Japanese rail transit + retail prepaid IC card using FeliCa contactless smart card technology by Sony distinctive Japanese transit IC card heritage.

Jan 2004 — Suica retail payments expansion beyond transit.

Jan 28 2006 — Mobile Suica launched as Japan's first NFC mobile wallet via Osaifu-Keitai FeliCa-enabled Japanese mobile handsets.

Oct 2016 — Suica via Apple Pay launched on iPhone 7 + Apple Watch Series 2 globally.

2020 — Suica via Google Pay launched on Android + Wear OS.

Ownership & operator

Operating entity: Suica (Japanese rail transit + retail prepaid IC card; JR East parent).

Major shareholders: East Japan Railway Company JR East (TYO: 9020; Japanese passenger rail operator).

Regulators: FSA Japan + BoJ + Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Technical integration

Suica physical FeliCa contactless smart card + Mobile Suica via Apple Pay + Google Pay + Wear OS (iOS + Android; ~100M+ Japanese Suica cards) + Suica retail POS network across Japan; JP Zengin + FeliCa contactless smart card technology.

Implementations & partners

JR East parent: [[jr-east]] (East Japan Railway Company JR East; TYO: 9020; Japanese passenger rail operator).

Interoperable Japanese transit IC card standards: [[pasmo]] (Pasmo Tokyo Metropolitan Japanese transit + retail prepaid card) + [[icoca]] (ICOCA JR West Japanese transit + retail prepaid card) + [[toica]] (TOICA JR Central Japanese transit + retail prepaid card) + [[sugoca]] (SUGOCA JR Kyushu Japanese transit + retail prepaid card) + [[kitaca]] (Kitaca JR Hokkaido Japanese transit + retail prepaid card) + [[manaca]] (manaca Nagoya transit + retail prepaid card) + [[pitapa]] (PiTaPa Kansai transit + retail prepaid card) + [[nimoca]] (nimoca Nishitetsu Kyushu transit + retail prepaid card).

Major Japanese mobile wallet + payments competitors: [[paypay]] (PayPay; SoftBank + LY Corporation JV; Japan's largest mobile wallet by users + transactions; ~65M+ Japanese users) + [[line-pay]] (LINE Pay; LINE mobile wallet) + [[d-barai]] (d払い d Barai NTT Docomo Japanese telecom mobile wallet) + [[au-pay]] (au PAY KDDI Japanese telecom mobile wallet) + [[rakuten-pay]] (Rakuten Pay; Rakuten Japanese mobile wallet) + [[merpay]] (MerPay Mercari Japanese mobile wallet).

Regulators: FSA Japan + BoJ + Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Status

Active, JR East Japan Railway Company TYO:9020 Japanese rail transit + retail prepaid IC card + Japan's largest transit + retail prepaid IC card by issuance + FeliCa contactless smart card technology + ~100M+ Japanese Suica cards + Mobile Suica via Apple Pay + Google Pay + Wear OS [1, 2].

Sources

• 1 Suica — official
• 2 Suica — Wikipedia
• jp-cro In-corpus: reports/countries/JP-japan.md

Source

Biography extracted from suica.md. See matrix.md for standards-support matrix if present.