Originally Posted by acregal

Basically everyone buys a train pass for their work - these are (almost all) IC cards and, in general, the train pass is only issued on that company's IC card. For example, in Kansai there is Icoca (from JR West) and PiTaPa (basically everyone else) - they're interoperable, but you can't get an Osaka subway train pass on Icoca. This winds up being a huge thing - there is no real advantage to this for people who don't have JR East train passes (actually, there is a disadvantage as you go from one card to this plus a second card).

Until Apple gets other operators on board it is basically worthless for most of the population.