In 2013, public transport operators in Japan launched a national interoperable ticketing project for Japan. This initiative enabled interoperability between the largest contactless transport card schemes in Japan which provide ticketing services for 142 operators. The nationwide contactless transport card interoperability covers around 80% of the population (~100M) and 4,275 of the 9,000+ stations in Japan. Nationwide interoperability resulted in a significant increase in transactions but also a number of business challenges.

At Transport Payments Asia Pacific, Tomohiko Umekawa, Deputy General Manager of IT & Suica Business Development at JR East and Makoto Nishigoori, Section Manager of General Affairs at PASMO will discuss what was required to create interoperability between the disparate public transport ticketing systems across Japan, and the outcomes from having interoperable transport ticketing over the last 5 years in Japan.

Tomohiko Umekawa, Deputy General Manager of IT & Suica Business Development, JR East Mr. Umekawa joined East Japan Railway Company (JR East) in 1989. He worked on the contactless IC card development, the foundation of Suica, from 1993-1996. From 2005-2008, he was the leader of the project management group building Suica & PASMO interoperability at JR East Mechatronics. Since 2012 Mr. Umekawa has been working as Deputy GM of the IT & Suica at JR East where he is now responsible for interoperability, Suica Center Server operation, and R&D for the next Suica system.

Makoto Nishigoori, Section Manager of General Affairs, PASMO Makoto Nishigoori joined PASMO in 2009. PASMO is the contactless e-payments product use on non-JR railway lines, private bus companies as well as retail payments. Mr. Nishigoori is mainly engaged in accounting and tax work, and also has been involved in formulating business plans. Currently he is involved in the implementation of PASMO card services as personnel and legal affairs manager.

Transport Payments Asia Pacific will cover:

Transport Payments Asia Pacific 2018 provides excellent opportunities for leading technology and solution providers to communicate information about their company, their brand, and their products and services to end-users responsible for implementing and managing transport revenue collection schemes in Asia Pacific.



To find out more about this event and available packages, please contact Elaine Li, Business Development Manager, APSCA Asia Pacific at [email protected] or at +86 13671773143.