I've been living in Japan for about 6 months and recently I've felt a very aggressive local push to get people to use these barcode payment apps. For example I

I've been living in Japan for about 6 months and recently I've felt a very aggressive local push to get people to use these barcode payment apps. For example I recall in January PayPay were offering a discount at FamilyMart (a konbini/convenience store) for signing up and using their app, then a few weeks ago LINE Pay had a similar promotion. Both apps offer loyalty points for paying with them. But what's strange is this feels like a backwards step; you can also pay with your train IC card in konbini and now that you can get Suica (one of the train IC cards) on Apple Pay and Google Pay it's significantly faster to use that than unlock your phone, open LINE/PayPay and get the barcode. LINE Pay also have their own prepaid card and Mercari just launched their own prepaid card built into Apple Pay too. Still, I wonder which (if any) will come out the winner and how many more will pop up in the meantime.