Nintendo announced this week that its Wii video game console will now be able to accept payment cards in Japan. It was reported that the update went live yesterday and lets users tap a contactless Suica fare card against the Wii U’s gamepad to access their funds.
The Wii has a Near Field Communication reader built into its controller, but according to the news source, the Suica announcement is the first time Nintendo is using NFC to accept payments for downloadable games.
Users in North America and Europe are not completely left in the dark though. According to EuroGamer, the software update will let users move their games, apps, and settings, while also letting them save files from one console to another. Once transferred, the source machine will then be formatted.
This is not the first mention of Japan using contactless payments. Just earlier this month, PYMNTS.com discussed how Japan-based payments network JCB was going to start testing a contactless payments service in Tokyo, ahead of a commercial rollout in 2015.
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