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