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TOICA (トイカ, Toika) is a rechargeable contactless smart card ticketing system for JR Central railway network which was introduced in the Chūkyō Area (Greater Nagoya) of Japan on November 25, 2006.
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The name is an acronym for Tōkai IC Card. Just like JR East's Suica or JR West's ICOCA, the card uses RFID technology developed by Sony corporation known as FeliCa.
As of December 2007, 350,000 cards have been issued. In the Nagoya area, 50% of the riders, or 70% of the commuter pass holders, use the card.
Usable area
TOICA is currently accepted on JR Central lines in the following area:
Integrated services
TOICA is also usable in Suica accepting area (Greater Tokyo Area, Sendai, and Niigata) and ICOCA accepting area (Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto and Okayama-Hiroshima) and SUGOCA accepting area (Fukuoka-Saga). Suica (including Mobile Suica), ICOCA and SUGOCA are usable in TOICA accepting area as well. However, a card has to be used within a single area; for instance, it is not possible to use a card for the trip between Tokyo and Nagoya. The integrated service with Suica and ICOCA started in March 2008 and with SUGOCA in March 2011.
Future of TOICA
The smart card called manaca that will be introduced in February 2011 on Nagoya Railroad (Meitetsu) and Nagoya Municipal Subway, and slated to replace the current Tranpass (トランパス, Toranpasu) system, will have integrated service with TOICA by 2012 and Suica by 2013. Service with PiTaPa for Kintetsu and other private railway networks in Kansai region is also being considered.
However, there are no known plans to have integrated services with already existing smart card systems in Shizuoka Prefecture, namely LuLuCa (Shizuoka Railway) or NicePass (Enshu Railway). There are also no integration plans with other cards, such as PASMO, SUGOCA, or Kitaca.