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The story
JR East, Tobu Railway, Keisei Electric Railway, Keikyu, and other rail operators — seven companies in total — have announced that starting in spring 2027 they will abolish magnetic tickets and switch to QR-code-based tickets. Each ticket will reportedly be assigned a unique code, with a system in place to invalidate any duplicated or reused codes. On 5ch forum threads, opinions were divided over worries about QR code forgery or duplication, how unstaffed stations would handle it, and differences in usability compared to contactless credit card payment.
“Keisei Electric Railway Co., Keikyu Corporation, Sendai Airport Transit Co., Tokyo Monorail Co., Tobu Railway Co., East Japan Railway Company, and Hokuso Railway Co. will replace magnetic tickets with QR-code tickets starting in spring 2027, changing how tickets are used.”
Source: news.livedoor.com / Original article here
What people said
Even Shikoku is now in the era of buying tickets via QR code on your phone.
If anything, unstaffed stations are exactly where QR codes would help the most.
I'm at a semi-unstaffed, middle-of-nowhere station in Kyushu, and it takes not just SUGOCA but PASMO too.
A Japanese guy invented the QR code, but it spread around the world first and now it's getting "reimported" back into Japan.
QR tickets are just a pain to use.
This is clearly a step backward.
Do they really have to kowtow to T that much? (likely a jab at Tencent/China, where QR payments are the norm)
Apparently the station side manages every code it issues, and each one only works for a single ride (every code is unique). If you try to use a copy for a second ride, it gets rejected.
Does the ticket machine just spit out a paper slip with a QR code on it?
So basically, get the base-fare QR code tattooed on the back of your hand and you can walk in for free forever.
Yep. Okinawa's Yui Rail has used this since it opened, since magnetic tickets cost more to maintain.
The annoying part is having to hold the QR code up to the scanner — it's a hassle and takes time.
Seibu probably just doesn't have the budget to replace its equipment.
Choshi Electric Railway probably doesn't even use magnetic tickets to begin with.
Hurry it up.
JR East will protect Suica till the day it dies — it's basically their lifeline at this point.
What's the big reason they're so unwilling to let go of Suica?
It's the same as tapping through the gates now — the only difference is whether it reads a chip or a QR code.
So in the end you still have to feed a paper slip in? Then the experience doesn't really change.
It's a tap. A TAP.
You just hold it up and it reads it — it's not going to get sucked into the machine.
Paying by credit card doesn't really have any upside. Digging your card out just for this is kind of dumb to begin with, and the response time is slow. Once the promo campaign ends, nobody keeps using it, so it doesn't seem likely to catch on.
Wait… you don't seriously think "credit card" means a physical card, do you? These days everyone's got their card loaded onto their phone.
I'd guess they'll use special ink as an anti-counterfeiting measure.
Every time a ticket is issued, the server just embeds a serial number with a validity window into the QR code. There's no way to copy a serial the server never issued in the first place.
There are various anti-forgery techniques, but at minimum they'll make sure a simple screenshot-and-send doesn't work. It's the same idea as how, with all those "XYZPay"-type apps, you can't pay using a screenshot of someone else's phone.
Only one copy of any given QR code is ever issued. If you duplicate it, only the first use gets through the gate — the moment a second one is used, that code goes invalid.
What about a setup like this:
Person A travels from Hachioji to Akihabara.
Person B travels from Tokyo to Tachikawa.
A buys a ticket all the way to Tachikawa, B buys one all the way to Akihabara, and they swap QR codes with each other.
If the distance traveled is short but there's a big gap between the entry and exit times at the gates, I think that triggers a stop. Gate pass-through times are logged server-side.
If we're going that far, you can already pull that off today with two anonymous Suica cards. Obviously it's a crime though.
What happens on through-service trains going from a QR-adopting line to a non-QR line?
And the reverse — from a non-QR line onto a QR-adopting line?
Has that problem actually been solved?
Yui Rail doesn't run into this since it's a single standalone company.
Isn't the seven companies named in the thread title enough?
We've already gone from cardboard tickets, to magnetic tickets, to Io Card, to Suica before, and there wasn't any real chaos. The gates just run both systems in parallel for a transition period.
https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2026/20261013_ho01.pdf
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Magnetic tickets rely on a special magnetic material, which makes maintaining ticket machines and gates expensive, so rail operators in the greater Tokyo area have long been weighing a shift to QR codes or IC cards. The QR code itself is a technology developed in 1994 by Denso Wave (then part of Denso) that spread overseas before making its way back to Japan — which is why some commenters in the thread describe it as being “reimported.” The new QR ticket system is expected to work by having the server manage a distinct serial number for every ticket issued and log the time each code passes through a gate, allowing it to detect duplication or double use. Given this management approach, most of the fraud concerns raised in the thread appear difficult to actually pull off. Meanwhile, in comparisons with contactless credit card payment, there’s a common misunderstanding that it only covers physical cards — it also applies to credit cards loaded onto smartphones — and the fact that individual operators want to preserve their existing IC card infrastructure, such as Suica, also appears to be shaping the pace of the rollout.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Express+) thread “JR East, Tobu, and Other Rail Operators to Scrap “Magnetic Tickets” Entirely, Announce QR Ticket Rollout.”
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