Sad to see the mascot going in March. Apparently this entire brand reset is tied to something JR East is calling 'Suica Renaissance,' which is about a ten-year effort to turn Suica into a lifestyle brand.

Whitepaper: https://www.jreast.co.jp/e/press/2024/pdf/20241210.pdf

They're planning on moving beyond the ¥20,000 prepaid balance limit, they are adding QR code payments (think WeChat and Alipay), making Suica work across regions and support more touchless and cloud-based systems, and connecting it more with banking, shopping, loyalty, discounts, and local services.

So essentially they want to become your default payment platform which is a huge opportunity given how paper-money-driven Japan is.

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decimalenough 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They're a bit late to the party. It's still no China, but Japan has taken up digital payments big time post COVID and PayPay now has the lion's share.

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Shank 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The penguin isn't owned by JR East, which is the problem. It's owned by a specific artist and licensed by Dentsu, who has to approve all usage. The other transit networks actually fully own their mascots, but Suica's Penguin isn't theirs to control.

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ak217 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nooo the penguin is the best part of suica!

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echohack5 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The weirdest payment method has got to be the Coke ON vending machines that do not support SUICA but instead require you to QR code-IR blaster you to a website where you bluetooth pair with the vending machine then buy it on your mobile browser.

Like....somehow they turned a sub 1ms operation into a 4 minute 32 second one. It boggles the mind

	▲	freetime2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Coke ON Pay uses an app that automatically pairs with the machine when you open it [1]. It’s pretty quick and takes less than 30 seconds once you set it up. I think you might be referring to QR de Kessai [2], which was introduced in 2023 and is targeted more at inbound international tourists who don’t want to download the app and may not have an E-Money card. Basically they aim to support to support the widest possible audience - at the cost of a slow/clumsy experience. These machines should also accept payment via the faster Coke ON app method and often have E-Money tap-to-pay options too. From that perspective it kinda sorta makes sense. But yeah I wouldn’t bother with it unless I was dying of thirst and I had no cash or other payment options available. [1] https://szabo.jp/2021/05/16/coke-on/ [2] https://en.ccbji.co.jp/business/installation/qr-de-kessai/