This will be of no interest to people not living in Tokyo. If you got one of those new Mobile Suica enabled cell phones but don’t have a View Suica Card to use it. Don’t worry. From October, you will be able to charge the IC chip by directly debiting your bank account. Unfortunately, the service is limited to charging the chip for train fare and cashless purchases so you will still need to get a View Suica Card if you want to get a train pass or buy a reserve seat (green) on the trains with your phone.
Here’s the news about that.
I have this feature available on my phone, and so does my girlfriend, but she’s convinced that if she lost her phone, then whoever found it could get all the money out of her bank, just as if she had lost her bank card or something like that. Any reason to believe that this isn’t the case?
All Suica enabled phones, as well as many others have the feature where you can lock the phone remotely. This means that if you lose your phone you can shut it completely off from a pay phone. It’s in the manual.
Anyway, people lose their wallets all the time so I don’t understand why they are paranoid about this feature in case they lose their phones. To me it’s a lot safer than losing your credit cards and your identity.
Sorry to be a pedant, but you can also use Suica in Sendai and southern Miyagi, where I live. I also saw it in Niigata when I was there recently. Hopefully this will eventually lead to us being able to use it all over the country one day. That’ll be sweet.
Thanks Chris, I meant to say “people not living in Japan” not “people not living in Tokyo” I’m fully aware of the Suica’s coverage.