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Visa Launches Apple Pay Support in Japan

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Visa has announced that starting today, customers in Japan will be able to use their Visa debit or credit card with Apple Pay.

visa apple pay japan
Customers with Visa cards issued by Aplus, SMBC Finance Service, NTT DoCoMo, Credit Saison, JACCS, Mitsui Sumitomo Bank Card, and Rakuten cards will be able to add their card to their Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch.

Japan has set an ambitious goal of achieving 40% of all daily transactions via digital, cashless methods by 2025. With expanded support for Visa cards, more customers will have access to the ease and convenience of ‌Apple Pay‌, which should help the country move towards its goal within the next four years.

‌Apple Pay‌ earlier last week launched in Israel, and in Feburary made its long-awaited debut in Mexico.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
Tag: Japan
Related Forum: Apple Music, Apple Pay/Card, iCloud, Fitness+

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Top Rated Comments

Jtamale Avatar
Jtamale
63 months ago

40%? I’m surprised they aren’t already at 40%.
Japan is a predominantly cash society
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kentacho Avatar
kentacho
63 months ago

40%? I’m surprised they aren’t already at 40%.
Most Japanese customers still prefer cash over over types of payment
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
TakeshimaIslands
63 months ago

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...
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bosatsu Avatar
bosatsu
63 months ago
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!
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bwayne Avatar
bwayne
63 months ago

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…
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
T
Tsubame
63 months ago

For such a modern society it certainly seems out of place.
We are a weird dichotomy about that. In certain areas we lead the field, and in other areas we could not be more behind. Fax machines are still prevalent, I still know of offices that place delivery lunch orders via fax every day. A noodle soup tried to modernize and phase out faxes once and they lost so many orders they had to immediately go back.

Even with streaming services like Netflix gaining traction, our equivalent of Blockbuster is still thriving with video and music CD (yes, music CD) rentals.

Banking is one of the areas where we are really behind. I have given up on the rudimentary internet banking we have and accepted using my bank book/cash for lots of things. Getting a credit card as a foreigner here took me years (protip: Amazon's mastercard is a lot easier for foreigners than anything else I tried), I remember paying my tuition in grad school in cash.

Thankfully it is generally safe enough that carrying thousands of dollars in cash around isn't the end of the world, but it still feels really strange. It is a LOT easier these days than say...ten years ago. Taxis all take CC now and at the very least convenience stores all accept cashless payments. Paypay in particular has seemed to make significant inroads to widespread acceptance.

Your local hole-in-the-wall izakaya probably still only takes cash though.
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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