East Japan Railway (JR East) needs a good payments system to implement its growth strategy, and this is seen as one of the reasons for the rollout of QR-code-based teppay.
Suica e-money, its current payments offering, has been losing ground and might not provide enough of the right type of data for the company to plan its future.
“Although Suica is dominant when it comes to the transportation ticket gate, its presence in the in-store shopping scene has declined in recent years,” said Kazuta Fukushima, a senior research officer at Sompo Institute Plus, a Tokyo-based think tank.
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