https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/11497078/ https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/11497078/ This (Japanese) article is an interesting read about the s

https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/11497078/ https://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/11497078/ This (Japanese) article is an interesting read about the speed of FeliCa cards, the contactless tech Suica is based on. The speed requirement that was used when designing FeliCa was that transactions were to complete within 200 msecs, while cards in London for instance only required 250ms-500ms. While this may be overkill performance for other countries, the number was derived from Japan Railways’ rush hour statistics and simulations, which made their target to be processing 60 passengers per minute at the gate. As Japan has one of the highest train station utilization in the world, using contactless systems like MiFare etc. to make iPhone train payment work would probably clog the gates and not be realistic; hence, when iPhone 7 began supporting station payments in Japan, Apple supported FeliCa instead of the other way around. (The fact that smartphone users here disproportionately favor iPhone over Android also probably helped.)