====== Suica reactivation: a report ======

According to the JR East terms, [[https://www.jreast.co.jp/multi/en/pass/suica.html|Suica cards expire after 10 years of disuse]]. According to the officially sanctioned workflow, the only possible way to continue use of Suica beyond this period is to get a refund for the balance or transfer it to a new card.

However, as time goes on, and especially with the [[https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2024/20240516_ho01.pdf|expiration for the 100 year anniversary of Tokyo Station Suica]], more and more cards are, according to the terms of service, becoming invalid.

This brings about obvious questions:

  * Why are Suica cards limited to 10 years of disuse before becoming invalid?
  * What system or mechanism exists to deactivate cards after 10 years?
  * Can you reactivate a supposedly disabled/invalid/dead card?


For the first two questions, I have some hypotheses, but nothing concrete:

  * Maybe the 10 year limit comes from an accounting rule, not necessarily from a technology rule. You can't keep something on the balance sheet forever, and it's annoying to carry balances for cards indefinitely, so 10 years is some arbitrary point where all of the disused cards can be rolled into one block called "invalid cards" and then disbursed when people ask for refunds or fare transfers.
  * Maybe the 10 year limit is a point where, as a card lives, the card readers and terminals can write new data to the cards to prolong the life periodically, and after 10 years, it cannot be prolonged. For example, if the card has some type of information like certificate data or keys that need to be refreshed, those keys might become invalid after a point. When the invalidity period is reached, it won't have the necessary certificates, keys, or other cryptographic material that any of the current system readers have, and thus, will "fall off the network" and no longer be readable by it.
  * The cards are local stored-value cards. Because the data is stored locally, there is no mechanism to "deactivate" them except if they're tapped on a reader and the reader can write something to deactivate them. Further, some readers that are built by different manufacturers or use different payment rails may essentially behave differently. It's possible that while some readers might disable a card, others, particularly by third parties, won't.
    * It seems unlikely, for example, that JR East would allow a third party like [[https://thincacloud.jp/|Toppan Edge Payments / ThincaCloud]] to disable its own transit cards, because a bug or a security issue would effectively create a security hole.
    * Maybe the card itself has a mechanism to disable itself by checking the current time with the reader's time and locking out?

===== Can you reactivate a supposedly disabled/invalid/dead card? =====

So, the answer appears to be yes, at least according to reports on Twitter, and now having tested it myself, my personal experience. What follows is a description of the process I used to "revive" a card that, on-paper, should have been invalid.

On February 19th, 2025, I successfully used a Suica that was last used on January 11th, 2008 (17 years, 1 month, and 8 days of inactivity). On February 20th, 2025, I tested it in the JR East Suica region and confirmed that the card is still valid, and I was able to transit and recharge using JR East Suica machines, and even successfully enabled タッチでGo! without a problem.

First of all, a major tip off goes to the Twitter users who tipped me off to this.

  * [[https://x.com/nicopochi/status/1522005186696204288|ニコぽち（いろいろバカ）]]reports: "目的はコレ。発行から10年以上過ぎてJR東日本では使えなくなったsuica をJR東海エリアで復活させる事でした。見事成功。"
  * [[https://x.com/level_7g/status/1871535368748904822|なな爺(LEVEL7G)]] reports: "期限切れのSuicaをJR東海でチャージしたら復活する話って、その後に使用不可になるって指摘はあるものの実際に使用不可になったってTweetが見当たらないような。後から使用不可になる仕組みは存在してるけれど、実際には運用してないってことなのかな。"
  * [[https://x.com/frozenpandaman/status/1749804271305207974|eli! 🐐]] reports: "apparently at JR Central ticket machines, any reciprocal-use transportation IC card *past its 10-year expiration* can be charged & reactivated forever 😱". Note that Eli's Tweet also includes screenshots in Japanese and English (translated) discussing how this is the result of the following alleged chain of events:
    * [[https://jr-central.co.jp/|JR Central]] supposedly abolished the 10-year expiry on their region-specific card, TOICA. TOICA cards supposedly have no expiration date on currently-issued cards. (**Note: my 2023 issued TOICA still says it's only valid for 10 years.**) Because of this, and because the cards are mutually operable between regions, you can "revive" a card in the JR Central region because the machines do not respect the expiry date, even though JR East's do.
      * Eli pointed out (after publishing this article) that [[https://faq.jr-central.co.jp/71|JR Central says]]: "TOICAのカードや機器・システムは性能向上等のため随時更新を行っておりますが、長期間使用されていないカードについては､こうした機会がないために､最新のサービスレベルをご提供出来なくなる恐れがあります。このため､10年間ご利用がない場合には､失効することとさせて頂いておりますが、お客様の利便性を考慮し､機器・システムが対応できる期間は引き続きお使いいただける取扱いとしております｡（カード自体の不具合等により使用できない場合もございますので､その場合は駅係員にご相談ください。）". Additional documentation on the [[https://www.kotsu.city.nagoya.jp/jp/pc/INQ/TRP0000581.htm|manaca side of the house]] seems to indicate that cards don't expire, but may not be usable after 10 years.

Anyways, the hypothesis I had was the following:

  * It is probably possible to reactivate an expired Suica in the TOICA region, if the card has been disused for over 10 years, and the card's disuse has NOT been recorded anywhere.
    * I specifically speculate that presenting the card to JR East as expired will cause a cascading effect wherein JR East will not honor it. More and more of the Suica infrastructure is moving online. Supposedly, some Suica regions are already fully "cloud-based" and the role of the actual stored-fare on the card is becoming vague as time goes on.
  * By charging the card and using it completely outside of the Suica region before the nightly maintenance period (when everything is supposedly reconciled on the actual server storage for Suica), I speculate that the validity of the card cannot be questioned.
  * At the very least, I suspect that since the card can only store limited data, if the card can be reactivated in any region, storing at least 20+ transactions on the card should make it unclear as to whether or not the card is still valid, because all recent activity is valid.

So, to maximize my chances, the plan I executed and the exact steps were the following:

  - I booked a trip from Tokyo Station to Atami Station, the first major station in the JR Central region. Obviously, using my normal ("mobile Suica") for this, rather than using the target card.
  - I was originally going to try to charge the card at Atami, but I noticed that all of the infrastructure was still Suica-branded, and evidently, still JR East operated. I was skeptical about this, so I did not charge at Atami. At Atami, I exited the gates from the Shinkansen.
  - At Atami, I entered the ticket gates using my normal Suica, and boarded the Tokaido Line, now in the TOICA area, from Atami to Kannami Station.
  - At Kannami Station, I exited the fare gates using my Suica, now being completely in the JR Central region / TOICA region.
  - At Kannami Station, I attempted to charge my target Suica card. It was successful!
  - Before boarding the train, I bought a drink from a vending machine using the target Suica. It was successful!
  - I traveled from Kannami Station to Mishima Station, again, entirely in the TOICA region, using the target Suica. It was successful! **At this point, I believed it was now probably safe to assume the card was truly valid.**
  - I made another couple vending machine purchases: I used a vending machine that had the traditional "old-style" TOICA reader as well as one that supported QR code payments. Since these are operated by various companies, I figured maybe different results would happen. All were successful.
  - I played a set of オンゲキ and I paid for the game using the in-game e-money support, which is powered by ThincaCloud. Since this settlement process is different than rail, vending machines, and transit, I figured this "added authenticity" to the card.
  - I returned to Tokyo and went to bed. I did not touch the card on any JR East infrastructure, other than a vending machine, after returning to the Suica region. In-particular, I avoided any charge machines and any automatic ticket gates.

On February 20th, 2025, I tested the card further in the Suica region:

  - I charged at 7-11 in the morning.
  - I took Chuo Line from Shinjuku Station to Akihabara Station. Success!
    - I did experience one charge failure, but I think this was because it wasn't happy with how my bill wasn't inserted. I also used a new banknote, not an old one, and I didn't really have time to read the notice. The failure happened before the succcess though, and it didn't make any audible announcement of a problem.
  - I charged the card at Akihabara Station. Success!
  - I reinserted the card and asked it to enable タッチでGo! and it was happy to do that. Success!

I speculate that if the card "is disabled" it will likely stop working if used in the JR East region on all regions. I speculate that because it's a Suica, the only authority that can truly invalidate it is JR East, and by avoiding JR East's infrastructure, and then allowing the overnight maintenance period to reconcile the differences between the different regions, the card will be fully active.

I now consider this card fully alive, with a recent trip on JR East having been completed on March 8th, 2025.