There was also news earlier this year that all the major JRs will introduce a unified booking portal in 2027, but I was unable to find any proof of life that this is actually happening.
This year Japanese suffered a massive PII leak of 300 million records in total (= 2x the population, 10x compared to last year). Unsurprisingly, the IP block didn't help much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
> a unified booking portal
Maybe this [1]? It seems more like SSO rather than a unified booking portal though.
Btw, JR East is also introducing new terminals [2] something similar to McDonald's kiosks. In terms of UX, it's quite similar to SmartEX, you can pay by credit card and tie it to your Suica. The traditional ticket vending machines seem to have been getting complicated for years even for locals.
[1]: https://www.jreast.co.jp/press/2025/20250919_ho01.pdf (ja)
[2]: https://www.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/2607/04/news030.ht... (ja)