This is a very weird understanding of what IC cards are in Japan.
Yes, Apple Pay supports them, and they're ephemeral and easily recreated, and semi-anonymous; but Apple Pay over here absolutely still supports "regular" cards here.
And you can't use your IC card for online purchases, which is most of the article was about anyway.
> Yes, Apple Pay supports them, and they're ephemeral and easily recreated, and semi-anonymous
…so what I said, yes.
> but Apple Pay over here absolutely still supports "regular" cards here
But you don't have to use em.
Strange interaction here: you can refill Suica with a foreign credit card, there is no transaction fee for it, and it means you can turn anything you can purchase via IC card into 5x travel spending with the right card.
Maybe it's a non-native speaker thing; but for me when you says "Apple Pay uses XYZ here"; it implies exclusivity, that it underpins the whole system; not that it's one of the available option.
I can see now that's not what you meant.
> But you don't have to use em.
You do, if you want to use it over the internet. You and I might have a good grasp of what IC cards here are; but your comment without that knowledge can be misleading.
> it means you can turn anything you can purchase via IC card into 5x travel spending with the right card.
As long as nothing you buy costs more than 20000 JPY ;)
Yes, Apple Pay supports them, and they're ephemeral and easily recreated, and semi-anonymous; but Apple Pay over here absolutely still supports "regular" cards here.
And you can't use your IC card for online purchases, which is most of the article was about anyway.