Read a transit card
Hold a Japanese transit IC card against your iPhone and Hex NFC shows the money left on it and the trips it remembers. Suica, PASMO, ICOCA, TOICA, manaca, SUGOCA, nimoca, Kitaca and the rest of the Japanese IC family all sit on one system. Every one of them is read the same way. A transit card from another country is not read here, and Tags that work with Hex NFC says what the app does read.
Before you start you need the app installed from the App Store on an iPhone that reads NFC tags. You also need the card out of your wallet. Read your first tag covers installing the app and reading one tag, and Common questions says which iPhones the app needs. A transit card is only ever read, never changed, so there is no way to add money to a card here.
Read a transit card
Paso 1Open Hex NFC
Open Hex NFC. The home screen opens, with the Scan tile on it.
Paso 2Open the scan screen
Tap Scan. The scan screen opens and reads "Hold tag against the top of your iPhone".
Paso 3Hold the card against your iPhone
Hold the card flat against the back of your iPhone, near its top edge. Keep both still until the screen reads "Tag detected", which is the read finishing. Where nothing happens after a few seconds, move the card a little and hold it again. To stop instead, tap Cancel. That takes you back to the home screen. Left alone, the read ends by itself and the screen reads "Scan failed" with Try again under it.
Paso 4Wait for the card to open
Move the card away. After about a second the Transit card screen opens on its own.
Paso 5Close the card
Tap Close. You are back on the home screen.
If the card is not found
Hold one card at a time, away from the other cards in your wallet.
Hold the card against the back of your iPhone near its top edge, not against the middle of the back.
Check that the card is a Japanese transit IC card. A card from another transit system does not open the Transit card screen.
Where a read starts and then fails, the screen reads "Scan failed" and says what went wrong. Tap Try again and hold the card still for longer.
If a tag does not scan or write covers the rest.
What the Transit card screen shows
The screen has three parts, in this order:
The card, with the system it belongs to, such as "Transit IC (Suica / PASMO …)", and "Balance" over the money left on it in yen.
The tag info card, which describes the chip in the card. Two of its rows belong to transit cards alone: "System code", and "Transactions" for the number of entries read.
"History", the list of what the card remembers. A transit card keeps its 20 most recent transactions, so 20 rows is the most this list holds. A card that reports none shows "No transaction history on this card" instead.
Under the list, in both cases, the app repeats what it can and cannot name. The text reads: "Station names are shown where available; other stops appear as their raw transit codes."
What a history row says
A row gives what the transaction was, the day it happened, and the balance left after it. A train trip shows the stop you entered and, where the card recorded it, the stop you left. A stop the app cannot name shows one of two things in place of the station name. One is the name of its train line followed by a question mark. The other is the stop's raw transit code.
Where the card recorded no entry stop, that end reads "Unknown". Where it recorded no exit stop, the row shows the one stop on its own, with no arrow after it. A row carrying no readable date reads "Date unknown" under its heading.
A transaction that is not a train trip names what happened in place of a route:
"Bus fare".
"Charge" for money added to the card.
"Purchase" for something bought in a shop.
"Transaction" for a block of the card that fits none of those.
VoiceOver reads a train trip as "Ride" before the two stops and the date.
Name a stop the app could not
A stop with no name yet is one you have been to, because it is on your card. You can tell the app what it is called. When at least one train stop is unnamed, a card above the history reads "Some of these stops aren't named yet. You've been to them. Help fill in the blanks below." A line under it says what a name carries. It reads: "A name you send goes to us for review and may ship in a later update. It carries the stop's codes, the card type, and the name you typed. Nothing else from the card is sent."
An unnamed stop is the one showing a train line and a question mark, or a raw transit code, where a station name would be.
Paso 1Find a history row with an unnamed stop
Scroll to the first row that shows one. The field for that stop sits directly under the row. The line above the field names the train line the stop sits on. Where the line is unknown too, it reads "Unknown stop".
Paso 2Enter the name
In Name this station, enter what the stop is called.
Paso 3Send the name
Tap Submit. The app shows "Thanks!" in place of the field, then the field closes and stays closed until you scan the card again.
Each unnamed stop gets one field, even when several trips pass through it. A name you have sent cannot be taken back. Where you sent the wrong one, scan the card again to bring the field back, and send the right name. Every name goes for review before any of it ships, so a mistake does not reach the app on its own.