Cash Society Japan
I remember my first payday after coming to work as a teacher in Japan, being handed an envelope containing my entire month’s salary in cash, which was quite a surprise to me.
Japan has always been a very cash-oriented society, with no equivalent to personal checks or money orders, and when making purchases most people will pay in 10,000 yen bills. Credit cards exist here of course, but they’re much less common than in the U.S., and to get one you need to pass a strict credit check and have been employed at the same company for at least a year — a far cry from the pre-approved credit cards I’d get in my mailbox back in college.
A few years ago, we bought the plot of land behind our home, I remember going to pay for it in cash, counting out the bills for the previous owner as we finalized the contract.
Of course, the only thing constant in the world is change, and Japanese are slowly adopting alternate ways of paying for products, such as Suica, a rechargeable contactless smart card that can be used to pay for train tickets, food purchases and so on.
One of the most innovative ideas I’ve seen in a long time are the cell phone with Suica cards built into them, so all you need is your phone and you can pay for just about anything.
Poor Mari….she’s my favorite. If I ever become a j-pop singer and part of the...
Shes definitely at the top of my hot list.
perfeckt 10:10
It’s odd how they basically have jumped from a fairly basic cash based system to using cell phones with built in debit or credit cards.
it’s like they were behind the times and then they jump past the US with the cell phone payment innovation.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 amit seems like they do that a lot, tornadoes28. In many respects Japan feels way more advanced but they’re still grasping onto numerous old-fashioned customs and habits.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:06 amI remember reading about the use of mobile phones to pay for things in Africa – but perhaps that’s a different sort of technology.
That said if your phone gets pinched in Japan and it has a Suica card in it, you’re stuffed! Or do you need to do something like tap a PIN in too? I suppose crime in Japan is very low so the risk isn’t worth worrying about if you keep your stuff safe.
September 23rd, 2008 at 5:24 pmI did it again. . . I post Peter’s articles for him, and sometimes screw up when by not changing the author name when I publish. This happened again with this article, which is Peter’s, not mine.
My apologies to everyone, especially Peter.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:12 pmHaha, no problem. Supposedly things that we take for granted, like Quicken or Quickbooks in business settings, are really not that advanced here (although they exist). I was telling a zeimusho guy I know about it once, how easily a company with one employee can accurately track all kinds of money within a company without ever handling cash at all, and they were quite amazed.
September 23rd, 2008 at 10:56 pmThe cards are really only a jump in technology and not in financial flexibility.
I believe that cards like Suica, Pasmo, etc are all pre-paid debit type cards, which is just basically putting your cash into a card for convenience sake (and giving the card companies a large pool of money to play with).
I don’t know the details of the mobile phone versions, but I assume it is still a debit card type of arrangement or at least you have to pay the full amount monthly with your phone bill and therefore the only credit extended is until that monthly bill.
Even most credit cards here are actually debit cards with the payment getting automatically deducted from your bank account.
September 24th, 2008 at 12:23 pm