Comment by freetime2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freetime2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what they have in mind for supporting offline payments, but I think that Japan's FeliCa-based [1] electronic money systems (Suica, iD, etc) are pretty impressive. They are most typically used to pay for transportation, but also widely accepted at stores, vending machines, etc. Balances are stored on the card, and it's very fast to use and seems secure for the most part. Recently it's also available on any smartphone or smartwatch with NFC. Japan was pretty slow to adopt touch payment for credit cards, so for a while it was my favorite form of payment.

Transit cards have a pretty low charge limit compared to credit cards - Suica balance is limited to ¥20,000 for example (although for cards that are backed by a credit card, I think the limit is higher). And now that Japan has fully embraced credit card touch payments, FeliCa-based systems are losing market share to Visa, Mastercard, etc.

But it really shines for applications requiring speed (i.e. a turnstile in Tokyo station) or offline payments (a vending machine in a park somewhere).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa

In Germany, there is the Electronic Cash (or newer versions called Girocard) which is similarly smartcard-based for the offline use case, but pairs with a regular debit card for online use [1]. Apparently, not that many people use the offline functionality.. it also has a somewhat low daily limit (though I think those are in place for some online transactions such as getting cash as well).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cash

>although for cards that are backed by a credit card, I think the limit is higher

I have a Suica thats integrated into a credit card, and it still has a ¥20,000 limit - the Suica balance is separate from the card balance, it just has a configurable auto top-up setting.

Interestingly, if I'm out of the Suica zone, sometimes auto top-up won't trigger. If I recall correctly this happened to me once in Fukuoka, presumably because there's some level of integration above just accepting payments that Hayakaken hasn't achieved. Never had a problem with Passmo interop though.

I've never heard of a suica with a higher limit, but it's possible they exist or that other compatible cards have higher limits.

I was actually thinking of other non-transit e-money cards like iD and WAON (my fault that wasn't clear from my comment). For an iD card linked to an SMBC credit card, your iD spending limit is the same as your credit limit [1] - which can be upwards of ¥10M. I don't know how or why anybody would spend that much in iD transactions, but I bring it up because it shows that SMBC seemingly has as much trust in iD security as they do for Visa's online transaction processing.

[1] https://qa.smbc-card.com/mem/detail?site=4H4A00IO&category=1...

Yeah I think ID is basically a parallel protocol for charging credit/debit cards

Tourist in Japan here. Suica is great. I prefer it over my Visa tap 'n pay just for speed. It's instant vs. a few seconds which isn't much, but it's nice.

Topping up a Suica every now and then vs. having many international transactions might also work out better for some. My bank (ING) gives me those fees back so it makes no difference to me.

At one point my US credit card categorized Suica top ups as travel expenses, which earned double points. So basically just tried to do all of my spending on my suica card, and racked up a ton of points in the process. Eventually they fixed that - but I had a good run for a couple of years.

Taiwan's EasyCard and iCash are their local equivalents. Seems to be common in that part of East Asia to have public transport cards that can also work for small expenses.

I wish other governments would take note as its a nice way to avoid the Visa/MC/Amex fees for at least some expenses.

Hong Kong octopus is also great

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