It's a rechargeable payment card. There's 10+ vendors and they're mostly interoperable. I don't think there's anything preventing him from paying cash at all of those transactions other than convenience. IIRC, the IC cards themselves can be purchased from vending machines so it's not like a China-tier digital ID thing.
It's so crazy to me for them to have moved to cashless payments - when I lived there 25 years ago (I'm old, sue me) maybe 10% of places would even take a card.
It's a rechargeable payment card. There's 10+ vendors and they're mostly interoperable. I don't think there's anything preventing him from paying cash at all of those transactions other than convenience. IIRC, the IC cards themselves can be purchased from vending machines so it's not like a China-tier digital ID thing.
It's so crazy to me for them to have moved to cashless payments - when I lived there 25 years ago (I'm old, sue me) maybe 10% of places would even take a card.