One reader two services
Edy and Suica are two major RFID-based services in Japan. Edy is widely used for payment at retail stores and Suica is widely used as train passes (and it can also be used for payment at some ratail stores).
NTT DoCoMo's so-called wallet phones currently support Edy only. However, they will support Suica as well on January 2006.
Edy and Suica currently require different kinds of reader devices even though they both use very similar RFID technology. NTT DoCoMo and JR East announced that they will work together to develop a reader device that can read both Edy and Suica RFID tags. This will eliminate the need for retail stores to install two reader devices. would also be more convenient for consumers.
via Asahi.com, July 27,l 2005, in Japanese