Nanaco

nanaco is a prepaid and rechargeable contactless electronic money card used in 7 Eleven convenience stores in Japan.

Supplied by IY Card Service Co., a subsidiary of Seven & I Holdings Co., nanaco is available as nanaco card (plastic card) and nanaco mobile (Osaifu-Keitai application for mobile phones with embedded contactless chip). The Nanaco format also features a postpay function (on the QUICPay scheme), which will be made available for users subscribing to an IY Credit Card during the summer of 2007. Purchases with nanaco earn points, which can later be used to make more purchases. The cards uses Sony's FeliCa technology, which is also used in a wide variety of contactless smart cards including Suica, Edy, and Pasmo. Services began on April 23, 2007 and the number of members is more than 3.8 million as of end-June 2007.

"Nana" means "seven" in Japanese, and the giraffe's head and neck is in the shape of the number "7," in reference to "7-Eleven" and "Seven & i Holdings."

The number of Nanoco cards stood at 5.9 million at the end of May 2000.