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I ate a lot 7/11 onigiri as a poor grad student exploring Tokyo on a long layover once... they're truly wonderful little stores. (They also are one of the few places you can use an ATM, very useful given how cash based Japan is)

He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face.

Rest in power sir.

3 comments

This is a bit out of date. These days basically any ATM allows foreign cards, just in time for Japan to finally switch to electronic payments in a big way (in particular PayPay).

Yes. The payments landscape has shifted pretty dramatically in Japan over just the past 3 years. It used to be that you had to worry about getting cash, IC cards, refilling said IC cards, going to an actual bank with your passport, etc. Now all you need is an iPhone (although I hear Android phones from outside Japan still can't use suica).

I was in Japan recently and did find that my non-Japanese Pixel phone wasn't allowed to use the mobile Suica app, even though the hardware supports it. Some nerds on XDA figured out the mechanism preventing it[0], and if you're rooted it seems like you can run a Magisk module to patch the region check in the PixelNfc component[1].

I guess it's down to licensing for the FeliCa smart card system or something? I will say, as a privacy person, I'm pretty jealous of the ubiquity of IC card payments there. You can buy the card at a kiosk with zero KYC and top it up with cash at the same kiosk. Since it's a stored-value system, it works offline, and you get the convenience of paying with a card with nearly all of the anonymity of paying with cash.

[0] https://xdaforums.com/t/global-pixel-device-unlock-felica-su...

[1] https://github.com/jjyao88/unlock-felica-pixel

Given that my friends with iPhones were having more trouble than me with a visitor Suica, the phone advantage isn't a major one.

Also, non-Tokyo transit systems often support VISA tap and pay.

A visitor Suica card (that you can buy at the airport and refill with cash in seconds), a VISA, and cash (that you can get at any ATM with a debit card) is 100% sufficient for travel in Japan.

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The cash part of it is non-negotiable, though. Many merchants are cash-only. Presumably, handling large amounts of cash works fine in a society where the risk of getting robbed at gunpoint is actually zero [1], and where the police are ready to use very persuasive methods to maintain that 99% conviction rate.

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The real frustration is that buying rail tickets online inevitably triggers an extra layer of VISA verification (2fa code through SMS or email), which usually works fine, but has already shat the bed for me once, requiring a chat with my card's CS rep. Which fucking sucks when you don't have a phone # that works.

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[1] While the risk of some cutpurse ganking your wallet is so near-zero, it's a rounding error.

This will remain the case as long as Sony continues to charge Android manufacturers heavy licensing fees for the FeliCa chip needed for Suica/Pasmo.

However, major Japanese cities are increasingly allowing credit card tap to pay for transport, Osaka Metro is already 100% on board and Tokyo has started trials. There's a long tail of minor companies that will likely take forever though.

Tokyo Metro, Toei, Keikyu, and others have rolled it out across a significant chunk of their lines at this point.

You can get to a significant portion of the network... So long as you don't have to take a JR train.

My only complaints about Contactless Cards from Visa/Mastercard/etc. Is that they're significantly slower than FeliCa. I can sprint through a gate with my Pasmo; I have to stop with my Visa.

For Visa, the closest transaction processing happens in Colorado. So they're slooooooow.

Disclaimer: Fmr Visa, current PayPay employee. I hate payments.

Android doesn't support suica for public transport but you can still use Google Pay most of the time. Except when you randomly can't! Unlike other countries you still need to take a credit card (and maybe even some cash) as backup.

Android does support suica/felica, and many (most?) phones have the hardware for it, but most manufacturers will only pay the licensing fees for it for their Japanese SKUs, leaving other SKUs with a software lock.

Okay, I'd be curious what phones have support for it enabled. I thought the chips were only installed on iPhones!

"Unlike other countries you still need to take a credit card (and maybe even some cash) as backup"

"still"

I take a reliable CC and cash any fucking day over Apple and Google Pay or any shit payment "app" like Revolut which simply blocks you out of your account if on a device they seem to not like / that is not attested, while preventing browser-based usage.

You stupid tech bros. Appps, apps, apps, everything via an app.

Even the Tokio metro paper tickets via cash work well. No phone needed!

Well you'd hate Japan then since everybody is using PayPay. Which is an app and not even a standard like Google Pay or Apple Pay.

Sorry, complaints about our payment policy are handled through the Complaintly app, which is available for Apple and Android devices.

> You stupid tech bros

You realize you're posting this on Hacker News, yes?

My wife has a US-bought iPhone, and we tried to load some money onto a digital Suica card. The hardware is there, but the system wouldn't accept any of the credit cards or her debit card that she had registered with Apple Pay.

An Indian friend of mine (who lives in the US) told me it's similar to when he visits family in India; none of the digital transit cards work for him because the system won't accept his US payment cards.

(I have an Android phone which has the right FeliCa hardware, but it's disabled in software so Google doesn't have to pay the licensing for it.)

Visa and (to an extent) Mastercard have been known to block transactions from their foreign-issued credit cards to digital Suica and PASMO cards. US issued Amex and Discover cards (at least prior to the latter's acquisition by Capital One) use JCB's merchant network in Japan, and thus receive the same treatment as any other JCB-branded card.

There are still significant gaps. I was heading from Narita to Shinjuku about a year ago, and after I got off the Narita Express, I realized my Pasmo card (which I hadn't used in about 8 years) didn't have enough on it to get me the rest of the way. There were two ATMs I could find in the (reasonably-sizeable) train station, and neither accepted my US-issued VISA debit card. I had to walk down the street to -- of course -- a 7-Eleven to use the ATM there.

During the rest of my week and a half there, I saw plenty of other ATMs that appeared identical to the ones in the train station that didn't work for me.

> These days basically any ATM allows foreign cards

I thought so, too, and perhaps it's just bad luck, but I was at Tokyo Station a few months ago, and I wasn't able to withdraw cash from Mizuho Bank's -- one of the largest retail bank in Japan -- ATM from my US debit card. I ended up walking (getting lost for) ~10 minutes to a Seven Bank ATM, and withdrew cash there without issue. So YMMV.

Most let you use them, the post office and 7-11 had the lowest fees

I would still call this accurate.

ATMs from the major banks (SMBC, Mizuho, Yuucho, etc.) are still extremely picky about supporting US cards. Most will do it... for an egregious fee.

Kombini ATMs are better about this, but 7Bank ATMs remain the gold standard with no fees outside of whatever the bank itself charges. LawsonBank is OK, but few/far between. Enet (at a lot of kombinis) are terrible.

Disclaimer: Former Visa, current PayPay employee

>This is a bit out of date.

I haven't been there in over a decade, so I believe you.

American founders aren’t necessarily more malicious on average.

They just end up rewarded after doing shady tricks more often. Whereas in any other country being too devious too often is fatal.

I guess the archetypal example on HN would be Microsoft or Oracle.

>They just end up rewarded after doing shady tricks more often. Whereas in any other country being too devious too often is fatal.

The market is adjusting apparently given the Mangione case and the Kimberly-Clark distribution center fire.

> He can be proud of the legacy he built, which is something many American founders cannot say with a straight face.

Please don't use an obituary to make a nationalistic swipe on HN.

>Please don't use an obituary to make a nationalistic swipe on HN.

I'm American.

Please don't tone police me, especially if you're going to call me something I'm most certainly not, especially since eighteen other people apparently found my comment useful.