Credit Cards!
So credit cards. In general, if you go to Japan, you probably won't need a credit card. It's such a cash-based society that you'll find yourself unable to use a card more often than not. Buuuut if you like buying things online, you may get tired of walking to the 7/11 to pay for your online purchases every time. Or maybe you just have trouble getting adjusted to being paid monthly instead of biweekly. There are a lot of reasons you may want a Japanese credit card, not the least of which being the utilization of that beautiful site called Yahoo Auctions, Japan's eBay only better.
In my attempts to get a Japanese credit card, I have discovered a few things. First we'll talk about the good things! It is REALLY hard to go into debt from credit cards in Japan. You see, if you have a card, and you fall behind on your payments and can't make them, the card will be cancelled and your data gets entered into some kind of super database that prevents you from getting another credit card from anyone else. Also, the interest rates for credit cards is fixed by the government, so you won't get gouged on a bad interest rate deal. You also get to choose your card most times, either Visa, MasterCard, or JCB, which is kind of cool. JCB being the Japanese one means it's the most widely accepted credit card in Japan, but only in Japan and it won't work in other countries.
Your card is also automatically connected to your bank account, so when that one day a month comes for you to make a payment, you kind of don't have a choice. It gets withdrawn automatically. You can of course set up to make minimum payments each month instead of paying off everything, but obviously you should be smart about all this and pay it all off at once.
Credit cards in Japan also have a multi-payment system option. If you go to a store and buy something really expensive (or something not that expensive), you can say at the store that you want to divide the payment out over so many payments. Say you go buy a bed that costs 60,000 yen, but you don't want to pay that whole amount on the next billing cycle. So you tell the store clerk that you want to use 3 payments. They set it up, and during your next billing cycle, an automatic 20,000 will be taken out for the bed frame. You've still got another 40,000 to pay off, which will come out in 20,000 increments over the next two months. And the cool thing is that this pending payment does not accrue interest. It can be quite useful, but again you've got to be smart about using it and really should only do a single payment every time unless you're buying something insanely expensive for some reason.
Now on to the not so good stuff. Getting a credit card in Japan as a foreigner is a total crap shoot, even if you apply through Aeon or Rakuten, the two companies statistically most likely to approve a foreigner for a card. For one thing, you probably haven't lived in Japan for very long, and you have to list on your application when you moved into your current address and how long you've had your current job. Also you don't have any credit built up in Japan, which doesn't help. So even if you fill everything out right, and make enough money to get approved, you can still get rejected. It's completely arbitrary for foreigners. And the wait time for an application to be processed can be long. Sometimes it'll be a week, sometimes it'll be a month. It just depends.
Another thing is the application form itself. You will want to apply online, trust me. It CAN work in your favor to go see a representative and have them help you fill it out in person, in part because they'll get a commission from you so it's in their best interest to help you fill out the form properly, but you better understand Japanese and write kanji! Japanese law says that no one can fill out the form for you, even if you're present, and you aren't allowed a translator. I hadn't known this, and asked a JTE from my school to come with me and help, and they didn't know this law either, so I muddled through the application while my JTE stood on the sidelines unable to help. Thankfully the woman working with me spoke slowly enough for me to understand and used simple enough Japanese that it went well... kind of. In the end I misunderstood one aspect and added an unnecessary feature to the card, but hopefully that won't cause a problem.
If you apply online, someone can definitely be sitting there helping you translate all the kanji and unknown words, so really how you apply depends on how confident you are with your Japanese skills! Thank goodness I was able to muddle my way through the process without a translator...
In my attempts to get a Japanese credit card, I have discovered a few things. First we'll talk about the good things! It is REALLY hard to go into debt from credit cards in Japan. You see, if you have a card, and you fall behind on your payments and can't make them, the card will be cancelled and your data gets entered into some kind of super database that prevents you from getting another credit card from anyone else. Also, the interest rates for credit cards is fixed by the government, so you won't get gouged on a bad interest rate deal. You also get to choose your card most times, either Visa, MasterCard, or JCB, which is kind of cool. JCB being the Japanese one means it's the most widely accepted credit card in Japan, but only in Japan and it won't work in other countries.
Your card is also automatically connected to your bank account, so when that one day a month comes for you to make a payment, you kind of don't have a choice. It gets withdrawn automatically. You can of course set up to make minimum payments each month instead of paying off everything, but obviously you should be smart about all this and pay it all off at once.
Credit cards in Japan also have a multi-payment system option. If you go to a store and buy something really expensive (or something not that expensive), you can say at the store that you want to divide the payment out over so many payments. Say you go buy a bed that costs 60,000 yen, but you don't want to pay that whole amount on the next billing cycle. So you tell the store clerk that you want to use 3 payments. They set it up, and during your next billing cycle, an automatic 20,000 will be taken out for the bed frame. You've still got another 40,000 to pay off, which will come out in 20,000 increments over the next two months. And the cool thing is that this pending payment does not accrue interest. It can be quite useful, but again you've got to be smart about using it and really should only do a single payment every time unless you're buying something insanely expensive for some reason.
Now on to the not so good stuff. Getting a credit card in Japan as a foreigner is a total crap shoot, even if you apply through Aeon or Rakuten, the two companies statistically most likely to approve a foreigner for a card. For one thing, you probably haven't lived in Japan for very long, and you have to list on your application when you moved into your current address and how long you've had your current job. Also you don't have any credit built up in Japan, which doesn't help. So even if you fill everything out right, and make enough money to get approved, you can still get rejected. It's completely arbitrary for foreigners. And the wait time for an application to be processed can be long. Sometimes it'll be a week, sometimes it'll be a month. It just depends.
Another thing is the application form itself. You will want to apply online, trust me. It CAN work in your favor to go see a representative and have them help you fill it out in person, in part because they'll get a commission from you so it's in their best interest to help you fill out the form properly, but you better understand Japanese and write kanji! Japanese law says that no one can fill out the form for you, even if you're present, and you aren't allowed a translator. I hadn't known this, and asked a JTE from my school to come with me and help, and they didn't know this law either, so I muddled through the application while my JTE stood on the sidelines unable to help. Thankfully the woman working with me spoke slowly enough for me to understand and used simple enough Japanese that it went well... kind of. In the end I misunderstood one aspect and added an unnecessary feature to the card, but hopefully that won't cause a problem.
If you apply online, someone can definitely be sitting there helping you translate all the kanji and unknown words, so really how you apply depends on how confident you are with your Japanese skills! Thank goodness I was able to muddle my way through the process without a translator...
Comments
Post a Comment