IC cards and you

In an earlier post, I mentioned that Japan is a cash-based society. There is one notable and interesting exception to this, however. While stores will often not accept credit cards, they will sometimes accept integrated circuit (IC) cards, especially if they are in or near a train station.

IC cards are essentially little plastic cards that one loads up with cash, which one then spends later. Their primary purpose is for use on public transportation in Japan since they are accepted in many places and mean that one does not have to calculate the fare (because train fare is a combination of start up fee + distance charge) and buy tickets for every part of the journey.  Instead, one can just wave their card at a card reader and have the appropriate fare deducted from the card.



These cards can also typically be used at vending machines around the station and sometimes at the convenience stores in or near train stations, but it seems to be getting more and more prevalent elsewhere (e.g. daid's work has recently started accepting these cards in their cafeteria). So it would not be especially surprising to me if these take over and become more accepted than cash eventually.

While this system is very convenient, it also feels really insecure. Although one can register a card and have it canceled and replaced if it's lost, it's still something that one can dump a lot of money on and the lack of verification means that in principle, anyone can use it before it's reported as being stolen.

I first acquired an IC card on my first visit to Japan and it was super convenient...

...until it broke without apparent cause on Sunday night as I was coming home.

We visited a JR office on our way to the immigration office on Monday to inquire about the situation (since my card is a Suica, I get to talk to JR) where we had the fun experience of not being able to effectively communicate with the woman behind the desk until she tried to scan my card and found that it was unresponsive which made the issue apparent. Unfortunately, she couldn't issue a replacement on the spot (which I still don't understand), so I still have to go back and do it.

This means that to go to the immigration office, I had to do the whole "look at the maps to figure out the fare" thing and visit the ticket machines at every station, which are not the worst things in the world, but still considerably less convenient than just walking through the gates.


So IC cards: super convenient until they break. Then they take an unexpectedly long time to replace.