> I thought transport companies are the ones doing IC cards?
Well, a number of smaller transport companies are turning away from IC cards citing the cost of the equipment. I don't know at which point in the stack the greed is coming in - whether it's the IC committees, Sony with the underlying technology, some other player or all of them at once - but it's happening. JR East can probably sustain Suica for decades but you'll notice they've been making a hard push into traditional credit cards and banking; they've seen which way the wind is blowing.