13 ms·
If you haven’t experienced suica, it’s like magically fast. Faster than NFC, faster than Apple Pay, faster than tap to pay, faster than Disney magic bands, fast
by cptcobalt 21d ago
If you haven’t experienced suica, it’s like magically fast. Faster than NFC, faster than Apple Pay, faster than tap to pay, faster than Disney magic bands, faster than your work badge. It absolutely floored me every time I used it in Japan and it’s a full payment transaction.
- spot5010 20d ago+1 you can walk through the subway turnstile and not slow down.
- cute_boi 20d agoAnything is faster than NY turnstile lol. In NY, sometime i have to double pay because the card that worked on bus doesn't work on subway...
- lelandfe 20d agoOMNY with iOS Express Mode is crazy fast. I don't even have to do anything besides hold my wrist or phone next to the entrance: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105123 https://support.apple.com/en-us/105123 I don't often do transfers, though.
- ezfe 20d agoThat was not my experience in Japan; I found that it still took a second to go through every time, just like in New York/etc.
- jen729w 20d agoAm in Japan now and can confirm: you got a broken one. It's magically fast, everywhere. I prefer it even at the 7-eleven. Why wait the interminable 2 seconds for your Visa 'cardo touchy' to work when Suica is literally instant. Reading this article it makes sense why it feels too fast to be real, especially when using a powered phone. The things are already communicating as my hand is moving towards the reader. By the time it gets there, it's happened. Stunningly good.
- ezfe 19d agoI spent 2 weeks in Japan and used the Suica card near-daily in multiple cities. Sometimes it wouldn't even activate until I tapped it again, other times there was a delay.
- polishdude20 20d agoThe card might be fast but getting one as a tourist is kind of a hassle
- vvilliamperez 20d agoI bought one from a machine easily at a train station. It spits the card out for you.
- electriclove 20d agoSuper easy via your Apple wallet
- qurren 20d agoReally? In 2009 I just bought one at a vending machine, but I haven't really explored Japan since then
- my-next-account 20d agoWe purchased it from a machine recently. By the way, can I just say: Japan cares about UI in a very different way to Europe. The screens had pleasant graphics and sound, and the buttons for pressing in numbers felt so good. It just felt like someone who cares designed that machine. I did not like the refill-your-IC-card machines though, they made very loud noises so you wouldn't forget to take your IC card with you.
- qurren 20d agoThe best part is if you press the help button a real person pops out of the machine in a few seconds.
- HaloZero 20d agoThere was a brief period where it was difficult but that's gone now, you can set it up easily on Apple Wallet at least (apparently Google wallet is different?). It used to be easy to get one from a 7-11, then it was hard for a bit, then it was easy again with digital wallets.
- seanmcdirmid 20d agoBut you should probably just get a suica in your apple or google wallet, you don’t actually need an IC card. I’m not sure if using a phone makes it less fast though, I couldn’t tell (we had to get a card for my kid since he doesn’t have a phone). Definitely better than the QR codes used by China.
- Shank 20d agoIt doesn't make it less fast! The same model is implemented on the mobile side, which uses the same technology.
- sagarun 20d agoYou can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.
- rafram 20d agoAll iPhones can.
- eloisant 20d agoYes but I'm not going to buy a phone with an OS that I dislike just for my occasional trips to Japan.
- kelnos 20d agoHardware/software-wise, yes, but putting money on the card is a problem if you don't have a credit/debit card issued by a Japanese bank (or perhaps a few others). That's fine for locals, of course, but not helpful for many foreign visitors.
- bebimbop 20d agoI had no problem topping it up with apple pay while in Japan.
- rozenmd 20d agoSame deal with Opal in Sydney - the old school opal card processes a second or so faster than a card/apple pay/google pay that you can just keep walking. Smashed into the barrier the one time I forgot my card.
- hdgvhicv 20d agoI’ve never noticed any delay on the London underground with Apple Pay or a normally debit card - certainly not a second. Havent used an oyster for years but I don’t remember it being faster.
- filoleg 20d agoMaybe I am just plainly wrong or encountered some specific stations, but this does not feel true from my experience. During my last visit to London (in 2025), it felt noticeably slower than even NYC subway tap-to-pay. Suica is a whole other beast that isn't even in the same category of speed. It genuinely feels sub-200ms instantaneous.
- Symbiote 20d agoCorrect, Suica is faster than Oyster (card), which is faster than paying with bank cards or phones in London. (I haven't used the NYC system.)
- koyote 20d agoDefinitely slower to use a card or your phone in London. I remember when they first allowed card use more than a decade ago and it broke the flow quite a bit at rush hour as people were so used to the Oyster card's timing that they'd run into the back of people using cards or people using cards would run into the gate as it had not opened as quickly as they were used to. Quite a bit of commentary around it during that time: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/2zc104/that_extra_second_it_takes_to_process_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/2zc104/that_extra_s...
- left-struck 20d agoSomething that is amazing about Sydney’s system though is that as a visitor to Sydney you can likely use the train system without needing an app or any sign up. Just use your credit or debit card via nfc on your phone (or the physical one) I was honestly so impressed by that, you mean I can just tap on? Don’t need to stand here outside the gates for 10 minutes entering my info into a frustrating app? Don’t need to buy a $10 card, only $5 of which I’ll ever use? Even with suica being pretty easy to set up on iPhone, this is definitely something Sydney’s got over Japan’s system.
- pknomad 20d agoIt's not only magically fast, but it's super useful. You can use it at vending machines + convenience stores anywhere (unless it's one of those old ones that only take cash/coins and print paper tickets) and at the shops as well. People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
- Tor3 20d agoI've used a Suica card for many years now. I agree it's both fast and reliable. One summer I was crisscrossing Tokyo by train over several days, using the Suica card, so I got to see a LOT of commuters. Lots of people were in a hurry and would run through the gates (the default state is open, it closes quickly if your card is out of funds or some other problem). Running through the gates while quickly touching the card to the reader. I've done that a couple of times myself. It's also useful in that you can pre-order a Shinkansen ticket, for example, and link that purchase to your Suica card, which you then use for the Shinkansen gate. If there are other fees (which there may be) they're just deducted from the money the card holds, as usual. Makes everything very simple. For me a physical card is easier than using a phone. A phone is so much larger so I would need to get it from a pocket somewhere, while the Suica card I can keep in my jeans pocket or some other easy place.
- ks1723 20d agoI also did prefer my plastic Pasmo (essentially the same as suica) card until I learned during my last trip, that it can only be recharged with cash :-/
- throwaway29812 20d ago[dead]
- imglorp 20d agoIt appears to be based on NFC-F with latency under 200 ms, called FeliCa. Similar to regular NFC at around 300 ms latency plus any network times. https://www.sony.co.jp/en/Products/felica/NFC https://www.sony.co.jp/en/Products/felica/NFC
- numpad0 20d agoIt was a completely custom standard conceived by JNR/JRE and Sony during 1990s-2000s, that they eventually managed to be included into the common NFC specification through years of lobbying and pressuring.
- anigbrowl 20d agoPleasant alternative from a lot of US transit systems, eg BART int eh Bay Area which is the most customer-hostile service I'eve ever used. giant gates that seem right out of a dystopian science-fiction movie, an achingly slow card readers which absolutely force you to break stride no matter how ready you are. Add in the extremely unhelpful station attendants and you've got a recipe for a public transport service that people actively avoid if they possibly can. Then they turn around and ask for voters to approve extra tax money. I'm convinced none of the people on the BART board actually use the service.
- torton 20d ago> ... giant gates ... There's a big difference in antisocial behaviour and visible mental health issues between Tokyo and San Francisco. "San Francisco’s BART found that systemwide crime fell 41 percent after new gates were installed. Even more impressively, across the ten stations with the most corrective maintenance needs, staff time spent on in-system maintenance fell 96 percent, which suggests that fare evaders also cause most unreported crime, like littering, vandalism, and graffiti." https://www.city-journal.org/article/transit-crime-fare-gates https://www.city-journal.org/article/transit-crime-fare-gate...
- anigbrowl 20d agoPost hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. From the underlying press release (emphasis added): BART PD boosted the visible safety presence in the system by doubling officer presence systemwide and ensuring police are riding trains more. This approach is strengthened by BART’s ongoing use of unarmed Crisis Intervention Specialists, Transit Ambassadors, Fare Inspectors, and Community Service Officers. Safety efforts were also bolstered by the installation of 715 new fare gates at all 50 stations, a project completed in August 2025, four months ahead of schedule. More to the point, mone of that is relevant to the fact that the giant gates impose a burden on lawful users as well as any criminals they might deter, nor is it relevant to the extremely slow performance of the automated gates themselves. The experience of riding BART sucks for law-abiding paying passengers.
- LPisGood 20d agoIt has really surprised me a few times. It reminds me of that oft touted experiment where a light lit up within some number of milliseconds of a person hitting a button, and people perceive it as happening before they hit the button.
- eloisant 20d agoThe Japanese gate machines with tickets are even more impressive because they're mechanical, and super fast. You can put a single tickets or 2, insert in any direction, and in a few seconds the tickets is out at the other end of the machine so you don't have to stop walking at a fast pace.
- snvzz 20d agoI swear they do FTL.
- ranger_danger 19d agoThe inside of these machines are a sight to behold. Even more than 2 tickets are supported, including different sizes, and they're always sorted and re-oriented properly when they come out. https://i.redd.it/karotzuqw8uf1.jpeg https://i.redd.it/karotzuqw8uf1.jpeg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NyoXbsS1Jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NyoXbsS1Jo
- alberth 20d ago> Every Suica card has a chip storing two things: a unique card ID, and your current balance. Both of those live on the card itself, rather than a central server. When you remove the network and run locally, you’d expect it to be amazingly fast. But it’s also effectively physical cash. And that has many downsides as well.
- kalleboo 20d agoThey're now working on walk-through gates using UWB https://atadistance.net/2026/05/13/uwb-mobile-suica-isnt-just-walkthrough-gates-its-payments-too/ https://atadistance.net/2026/05/13/uwb-mobile-suica-isnt-jus...