Visa Launches Apple Pay Support in Japan

40%? I’m surprised they aren’t already at 40%.

Japan is a predominantly cash society

Most Japanese customers still prefer cash over over types of payment

Which is even more bizarre because Japan was the pioneer in 'cashless' payments.
Sony developed 'FeliCa ('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeliCa')' the first RFID cashless payment card system in the early 90s.
Japanese cellphones also had contactless payment abilities in the early 00's over a decade before Apple pay.

This is where the US inc /Apple always have the upper hand compered to Japan inc, Japanese companies might be the first to innovate and market amazing new IP's but the west always has huge success in making huge profits in mass marketing, gaining astroturfed mind share and saturation point adaptation of new innovations...

40%? I’m surprised they aren’t already at 40%.

Most Japanese customers still prefer cash over over types of payment

I have a Visa credit card installed in the Wallet app, I use it both on my iPhone 12 and my Apple Watch 4 at any store with the “iD” logo.
so far it wasn’t compatible with Apple Pay.

What would be the differences if you use Apple Pay? I don’t quite understand it.
Thank you!

I have a Visa credit card installed in the Wallet app, I use it both on my iPhone 12 and my Apple Watch 4 at any store with the “iD” logo.
so far it wasn’t compatible with Apple Pay.

What would be the differences if you use Apple Pay? I don’t quite understand it.
Thank you!

I have American Express, Visa, and Suica in the wallet too. Works fantastic. iD is a multi card aggregator so it accepts a number of cards. I think the big upside with Apple Pay will be online shopping and sending money to other people via iMessage I hope…

I think I lucked out when I went there as a tourist. I heeded the warnings of it being mostly cash based and was surprised how many places I could use my card. But now that I think about it I was paying at probably more tourist friendly places.

There are very few places in Japan these days which do not accept what most people on this forum would call a credit card - it’s been that way for a long time already. There’s also a myth perpetuated here that Japanese are primarily cash based consumers - that simply hasn’t been the case in probably 15-20 years. It’s a very evenly mixed bag. NFC payments have been around for a long long time as well. One thing that is clearly absent is written checks. Either personal or company, you very rarely find a check in Japan. It gets weird too - when I sold my first house, I walked out of Mitsubishi UFJ down the street to my other bank (SMBC) with a briefcase filled with cash - the equivalent of USD $1,150,000 in ¥. Then I promptly used it to payoff a bridge loan we had for our new place. Cash is still commonly used for large purchases. As an example the (now reduced daily withdrawal limit from an ATM is ¥500,000 (about US $4900). So yes Japanese walk around with a lot of cash. also credit cards are generally paid off at the end of the month in their entirety. so some cards, like American Express, really are not credit cards. They are what we used to call charge cards in America.

During the pandemic most people don’t use cash if they can get away with it. Actually I looked at my bank book and I’ve only withdrawn cash about 6 times from an ATM since Feb. 2020.

if I were a foreigner coming to visit Japan, I might use a card most of the time if I know that the CC issuer’s exchange rate is decent.

every time I go back to America and use cash it somehow feels like I’m doing a drug deal hahahaha.

anyway the wine is catching up ha ha …. onwards through the fog.