Tokyo going crazy for Pasmo
Less than a month after introduction, Pasmo cards completely sold out. Pasmo being new prepaid smart cards for public transportation in the Tokyo region. Click here for an introduction into Pasmo and its competitor Suica. With over a million sales in the first four days, the entire stock of 3 million open Pasmo cards was gone in three weeks. The special Pasmo cards commemorating the start at March 18th sold out in but three hours. All 110.000 of them(!)
There are some cards still available, but they are only to be sold to people buying a so-called commuter pass: a term ticket with a reduced price for a specified itinerary.
For those of us wanting an open Pasmo: we’ll have to hold our breath until July, when the first additional batch of a million cards becomes available, reports Nikkei News.
So, how could this have happened?
The Pasmo group had not anticipated so many people already having a Suica to get Pasmo as well. According to an analysis by said group, the main reason for Suica owners to buy an additional Pasmo was a lack of understanding. A lot of people simply didn’t seem to know that the cards are entirely interchangeable. Another reason for the unforeseen popularity was the number of visitors to the Tokyo metropolitan area to get one as a souvenir.
A quick round with my Japanese colleagues painted a somewhat richer picture. “The Japanese just go crazy for new things” was the most heard argument in my entirely non-representative survey. People bought Pasmo just for the sake of having one. And while there is some uncertainty about the interoperability (for example: can one use both systems to pay at shops that only brandish the logo of only one of them? Or: can one buy a commuter pass for a JR East operated line with Pasmo and vice versa?), awareness that Suica can also be used on the lines operated by the firms joined in the Pasmo group seems quite high.
No matter how successful Pasmo might seem: the big winner is JR East. The sale of Suica cards and the amount of transactions in shops using Suica have skyrocketed with the introduction of Pasmo. The daily issuance of cards has more than doubled since March 18th. With sales of Pasmo come to a halt, sales of Suica are likely to accelerate even more. And JR East even makes money from Pasmo. When people use their Pasmo in shops, JR East charges handling fees.
The future smiles on JR East.
