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Meanwhile, there's no apparent way to pay for a train using an American android phone (or at least I couldn't figure it out last year). One of the two apps refu

Meanwhile, there's no apparent way to pay for a train using an American android phone (or at least I couldn't figure it out last year). One of the two apps refused to install on non-japanese phones, the other installed but refused to run. Had to pay with cash and it was a huge pain. Half the time I inexplicably had to do a fare adjustment, a hugely embarrassing moment blocking the turnstile, especially considering the culture there.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
That’s thanks to Android phone manufacturers, which don’t want to pay for a global license for the NFC tech involved. Apple on the other hand does pay for a global license and so iPhones and Apple Watches from anywhere work perfectly with Japanese cash card terminals. I use a digital Suica on my US iPhone during my visits. Supposedly Pixels have the requisite hardware, but Google software locks the functionality to Japan. Some have been able to hack their Pixels to force it on but from what I’ve gathered it’s flaky when you do that.
- seabass-labrax 1y ago
  Why should they pay for a licence? Once a technology reaches such ubiquity, there's a strong case for it being part of the technical infrastructure of that society. To me, that means that governments have a responsibility to ensure that the technology is widely available, and arbitrarily locking it behind commercial licences does not help achieve that. To the extent that patents and licensing provide an incentive to develop such technology, it's beholden on governments to foot the R&D bill in some other way.
  - cosmic_cheese 1y ago
    I see your point, but at the same time fracturing product lines into a million micro-SKUs also isn’t great and should be discouraged.
  - lmz 1y ago
    Using this sort of logic Windows would be mandatory and paid for by the government on all your 90s, 2000s laptops.
- decimalenough 1y ago
  The "standard" in question here is NTT Docomo's Osaifu-Keitai, which is used only in Japan and requires both licensing and a special flavor of Sony's Felica chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai I can't really fault Android manufacturers for not wanting to pay extra for every phone in the world to get a bit of proprietary tech that's completely useless outside Japan.
  - fendy3002 1y ago
    No surprises here, it's Sony. The same company that use propertiary memory card on PS Vita.
    - LocalH 1y ago
      The same company that has a weird dichotomy between sometimes using other industry-standard data formats, but at times either succeeding (UMatic, Betacam, Professional Disc, Video8/Hi8) and sometimes failing (Betamax, Memory Stick) to have a dominant media storage standard. And sometimes they have products that accept industry standard formats (I have an older prosumer camera from Sony that supports SD, Memory Stick Pro Duo, and a proprietary flash format that is mostly used to record two formats at once, and they made plenty of VHS VCRs).
- Brian_K_White 1y ago
  Why the F should an interoperability fundamental like NFC require any such thing as a license in the first place??? It's utterly absurd to have ever allowed such a condition, despite it being a fact that everyone has been just living with for decades. If there is a problem, it is very definitely not thanks to anyone failing to pay a license.
  - Shank 1y ago
    FeliCa isn't NFC -- it's a close standard but it's technically different enough and has different requirements that it has licensing attached because it wasn't made freely available. It's technically also called "NFC-F". FeliCa predates NFC's wide adoption in consumer electronic devices because it was in use in Japan in the early 2000's.
- cosmotic 1y ago
  What do the international android phones support and does it require licensing?
Shank 1y ago
There’s not a reasonable solution using global Android phones, but you could obviously just buy a physical IC card and use that, which is what I was suggesting here in the first place.
- cosmotic 1y ago
  In China I could use alipay. It was a bit different since it was qr code driven.
rtpg 1y ago
In some stations now there are some entry points that use "standard" visa touchless payments that can be used now I think. Your android phone likely doesn't have the right NFC tech that iPhones have (google Felica, it's a separate NFC standard used basically only in Japan. Apple builds it into all of their iPhones, most android phones outside of Japan do not). It's mostly just a case of divergent tech, along with Apple being willing to spend money to avoid SKU differentiation/support people traveling in Japan.
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
The trick is to get a Suica card, which as an foreigner you need to do at the airport train station before you leave to the rest of Japan. https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/purchase.html https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/purchase.html
- asciimike 1y ago
  Hilariously, the physical cards can only be topped up at add fare machines (cash only) or ATMs (cash only). If you go down the "add a pasmo/suica on your phone" then you get into licensing issues with the other cabal (credit card issuers): you need to use an Amex to charge it via Apple Pay (IIRC Visa is now supported, but when I tried it last week my card was declined, so... YMMV).
  - cocogoatmain 1y ago
    Assuming you’re a tourist, are you sure it’s not your bank flagging the transaction? When visiting in April I too thought it was an issue with the card when trying to reload on apple wallet, but after two cards declined, found out the transaction was flagged haha Same experience with reloading on the physical machines. It’s quite amusing
    - asciimike 1y ago
      Same card worked via Apple wallet for other transactions, and the Visa thing is a known issue historically (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255018680?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255018680?sortBy=rank). A local friend confirmed the fix, but I can't seem to find any info from Apple or Visa about it.
      - Shank 1y ago
        It's working now (https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-recharge-ios172/ https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-rech...) and has been working since ~2023. The last hurdle many face is that if you disable location services, sometimes the transaction is still blocked as they can now geofence it to just Japan with foreign bank cards.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

That’s thanks to Android phone manufacturers, which don’t want to pay for a global license for the NFC tech involved. Apple on the other hand does pay for a global license and so iPhones and Apple Watches from anywhere work perfectly with Japanese cash card terminals. I use a digital Suica on my US iPhone during my visits. Supposedly Pixels have the requisite hardware, but Google software locks the functionality to Japan. Some have been able to hack their Pixels to force it on but from what I’ve gathered it’s flaky when you do that.

seabass-labrax 1y ago
Why should they pay for a licence? Once a technology reaches such ubiquity, there's a strong case for it being part of the technical infrastructure of that society. To me, that means that governments have a responsibility to ensure that the technology is widely available, and arbitrarily locking it behind commercial licences does not help achieve that. To the extent that patents and licensing provide an incentive to develop such technology, it's beholden on governments to foot the R&D bill in some other way.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  I see your point, but at the same time fracturing product lines into a million micro-SKUs also isn’t great and should be discouraged.
- lmz 1y ago
  Using this sort of logic Windows would be mandatory and paid for by the government on all your 90s, 2000s laptops.
decimalenough 1y ago
The "standard" in question here is NTT Docomo's Osaifu-Keitai, which is used only in Japan and requires both licensing and a special flavor of Sony's Felica chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaifu-Keitai I can't really fault Android manufacturers for not wanting to pay extra for every phone in the world to get a bit of proprietary tech that's completely useless outside Japan.
- fendy3002 1y ago
  No surprises here, it's Sony. The same company that use propertiary memory card on PS Vita.
  - LocalH 1y ago
    The same company that has a weird dichotomy between sometimes using other industry-standard data formats, but at times either succeeding (UMatic, Betacam, Professional Disc, Video8/Hi8) and sometimes failing (Betamax, Memory Stick) to have a dominant media storage standard. And sometimes they have products that accept industry standard formats (I have an older prosumer camera from Sony that supports SD, Memory Stick Pro Duo, and a proprietary flash format that is mostly used to record two formats at once, and they made plenty of VHS VCRs).
Brian_K_White 1y ago
Why the F should an interoperability fundamental like NFC require any such thing as a license in the first place??? It's utterly absurd to have ever allowed such a condition, despite it being a fact that everyone has been just living with for decades. If there is a problem, it is very definitely not thanks to anyone failing to pay a license.
- Shank 1y ago
  FeliCa isn't NFC -- it's a close standard but it's technically different enough and has different requirements that it has licensing attached because it wasn't made freely available. It's technically also called "NFC-F". FeliCa predates NFC's wide adoption in consumer electronic devices because it was in use in Japan in the early 2000's.
cosmotic 1y ago
What do the international android phones support and does it require licensing?

Shank 1y ago

There’s not a reasonable solution using global Android phones, but you could obviously just buy a physical IC card and use that, which is what I was suggesting here in the first place.

cosmotic 1y ago
In China I could use alipay. It was a bit different since it was qr code driven.

rtpg 1y ago

In some stations now there are some entry points that use "standard" visa touchless payments that can be used now I think. Your android phone likely doesn't have the right NFC tech that iPhones have (google Felica, it's a separate NFC standard used basically only in Japan. Apple builds it into all of their iPhones, most android phones outside of Japan do not). It's mostly just a case of divergent tech, along with Apple being willing to spend money to avoid SKU differentiation/support people traveling in Japan.

trenchpilgrim 1y ago

The trick is to get a Suica card, which as an foreigner you need to do at the airport train station before you leave to the rest of Japan. https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/purchase.html https://www.jreast.co.jp/en/multi/welcomesuica/purchase.html

asciimike 1y ago
Hilariously, the physical cards can only be topped up at add fare machines (cash only) or ATMs (cash only). If you go down the "add a pasmo/suica on your phone" then you get into licensing issues with the other cabal (credit card issuers): you need to use an Amex to charge it via Apple Pay (IIRC Visa is now supported, but when I tried it last week my card was declined, so... YMMV).
- cocogoatmain 1y ago
  Assuming you’re a tourist, are you sure it’s not your bank flagging the transaction? When visiting in April I too thought it was an issue with the card when trying to reload on apple wallet, but after two cards declined, found out the transaction was flagged haha Same experience with reloading on the physical machines. It’s quite amusing
  - asciimike 1y ago
    Same card worked via Apple wallet for other transactions, and the Visa thing is a known issue historically (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255018680?sortBy=rank https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255018680?sortBy=rank). A local friend confirmed the fix, but I can't seem to find any info from Apple or Visa about it.
    - Shank 1y ago
      It's working now (https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-recharge-ios172/ https://atadistance.net/2023/12/15/apple-pay-suica-visa-rech...) and has been working since ~2023. The last hurdle many face is that if you disable location services, sometimes the transaction is still blocked as they can now geofence it to just Japan with foreign bank cards.