I found this article on how Japan Railways East (JR East) plans to upgrade its Suica card so passengers don’t need to swipe them at the stations. That will mean practically seamless entries and exits at the stations and perhaps the elimination of most queues related to this part of rail operations. Here is the article published on Medium:
To quote from the article:
“You can currently use Suica to pay for goods and services at around 2.26 million locations in Japan. However, JR East has only issued around 31.47 million mobile Suica cards. That lags behind the two most popular cashless payment options — PayPay (66 million) and d-Barai (63 million).
The move comes as transportation cards, long a staple of travel inside of Japan, seem to be going out of style. More train companies are introducing QR code and credit card touch payment options, making the one cutting-edge technology obsolete.”
I have a Suica card as well as others like it from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Suica has really been a convenient way to pay transport fares as well as to purchase items such as drinks or snacks particularly at train stations in Japan. We are not yet at the level of the Suica card of more than ten years ago but there are lessons to be learned here in case we finally have something like it and others that make travel or commuting easier.
–
Caught (up) in traffic 