You don’t have to buy the physical Suica or Pasmo card. You can just generate the card from within your Apple Wallet… It’s still handy to have a physical card as a spare as not all rail ticket terminals have contactless scanners and will need a physical card to insert into a slot (or cash) for certain purchases. Also if your phone battery dies (although the gate should still work with the phone off, but sometimes it doesn’t). You should also demo how to buy a green car ticket.
Oh that's interesting that you don't need to buy the actual physical card! We haven't bought a green car ticket in awhile, but we'll have to keep that in mind for the next time we do ☺
To tourists don’t buy the card and put it in your phone. Please the card is limited and most cards are kept for kids and students to buy. Just buy one in your phone from apple wallet
When you add value through your iPhone wallet, does it automatically update the physical card or do you need to put the card close to your phone again?
Once you add the card to you iPhone wallet, you won't need the physical card anymore. In fact, after you add it to your wallet, you're not able to use the physical card: bit.ly/3Wzzb7U
Yes. That's also the only physical suica card tourists can get right now, as they temporarily stopped issuing unregistered suica cards. You can also avoid deposit by not getting a physical card, and only using Apple Pay.
We're not sure about cab rides since our mode of transportation was always either trains or buses. You can re-charge your card at a smart-recharge kiosk. You can find details here: atadistance.net/all-about-apple-pay-suica-recharge/
Thanks for the explanation, I think it was confusing on how to do it before. When I was in Japan I just chose to use the physical card, but now, I’ve added the value from a really old SUICA card to my Apple Wallet for future use. 😊 It makes it so much easier to use the phone rather than finding the card to go through each station. Also, after you transfer the physical card to the phone, you can’t use the original plastic card, anymore. Another note, I read that some people said they could only add value with Amex or Mastercard, as far as the foreign or non Japanese credit cards, to the SUICA card in their Apple Wallet.
They say that nowadays it’s not posible to buy physical IC cards due to “material shortage” (or chip shortage), so probably anyone visiting Japan could get one of those non-refundable cards or just get their IC card directly from Apple wallet.
