rustykettel

^ Now I can figure out which IC cards have a balance on them and which ones I zeroed out.

Reading the Suica card on my Apple Watch is great too, as I set it up after I left Japan and had no way, until today, to see if it would work. I did have to activate it manually as the Suica card didn't pop up automatically even though it's set as the default transit express card.

Beltway2A

Wow! You're correct. I decided to try one out because you posted this (I used the Suikakeibo app) and it worked.

mkjr

Very useful to check old cards and possibly sell them with a balance or offer them up for free to a visitor over on coupon connection.

O Sora

I, as a native Japanese speaker, googled about it and found nothing. If you don't care about buying a 4000-yen card reader to connect to iPhone and reading some Japanese manuals, there is a way.

freecia

iOS 11 will open NFC reading capabilities. I hope an app will include Suica reads. It shouldn't require Felica as my non-JP Android does that just fine with the NXP Tag reader App. Qualcomm wants to acquire NXP. I believe NXP supplies Apple's NFC chips.
http://www.gsmarena.com/iphone_7_and...news-25471.php

I'm also hoping the iPhone 8 international model can work as Mobile Suica including recharge. This would be quite nice for the 2020 Olympics if Mobile Suica also does a version in English (and possibly Chinese, Korean, Thai, etc high tourism visiting languages). Adding an existing physical suica card to Mobile Suica app would tell you the balance. The Japanese iPhone 7/7+ and Apple Watch Series 2 work as Mobile Suica if you have one of those.

jlick1K

Judging by the responses, a lot of people would like to know their balance while sitting in some overseas country. I certainly wanted to find out which of my cards had enough money on it so that I would know if I could just hop on the train after arriving or if I needed to add money first. Sure, it only takes a few minutes, but that's an extra few minutes in which I could catch an earlier train to get where I'm going sooner.

As I mentioned, if you search google for how to check your balance online, this was one of the first links to come up, but had no answer. Now searchers can find the answer in one of the first links instead of having to dig down a couple of pages like I did. There are times when it is entirely appropriate to gravedig a post.

lobsterdog

When in Japan where people really may need to have live balance of SUICA card there is no need to have a cell phone which internet functionality.

Just to clarify, you're not really checking your Suica card balance "online" - the balance is recorded on the Suica card itself, and you're just reading it directly from the card.

(This may explain the confusing results when searching for information about checking your Suica balance "online.")

eeflyer

Wow, I really appreciate the folks bringing attention to this possibility, even though this is an old thread. For what it's worth, T-Money cards (SK) can also be read using similar apps!

I'm also hoping that the next iPhone is able to read these as well.

Are there any security concerns to be aware of with using these apps to read the cards? I'm assuming there isn't, but don't know much about implementation details for financial and other prepaid cards. For instance, I didn't even realize that the balance is stored on the cards themselves. It makes sense in retrospect though, the laundry cards at my college dorms worked the same way.