Originally Posted by
austin.d.powers
Does this make things clearer? 😁
JR East owns the master key for the IC area which they licence to other companies. It's a major source of income.
I use ICOCA since I'm in the South West.
The only issues I've had are in Hokkaido (they refuse to pay JR East on principle), and Hiroshima (they use 2K RAM rather than 1K RAM because of a more complicated fare structure, can't load day passes but can still pay for single trips from the e-money).
Very interesting, Okinawa's OKICA has been added to the fully integrated flow, I have used and recharged my SUICA on the Naha monorail many times.
I never had problems using my SUICA in Hokkaido though.