It had been five years since we'd been to Japan and I couldn't really find up to date information about how well Australian cards worked and how cashless you could go these days in Japan.
So here is some anecdotal information from our trip (April/May) which is hopefully helpful to someone. This is from in and around Tokyo and Nagoya, YMMV outside the big cities.
- 30% of the time I was able to pay tapping my card the same as I do in Australia, this was my preference where available. Note some terminals appear to support tapping, but I was asked to insert my card.
- 30% of the time I had to insert my card and do nothing further - I never had to enter a PIN when making purchases.
- 30% of the time I had to insert my card and then sign my signature - usually on a digital thing, but sometimes on a paper receipt.
- 10% of the time was cash only. Some things I can recall are charging Suica transport card, gachapon capsule machine, coin laundry, paying to send luggage at the hotel, paying for an activity at the aquarium, small street vendor. Not included in this is I did sometimes use cash out of habit and for small amounts.
These are the cards I used:
- 28 Degrees Mastercard credit card - no international transaction fees, I rarely used this in person, but used it to book things online as sometimes debit doesn't work. If using online make sure you can receive SMSs as sometimes you need the enter a security code.
- ING Visa debit card - I did the 5 transactions thing the month before to unlock international fee rebates (I hear the international ATM rebates are going away soon though). Fees and rebates show up in transaction history. My wife used this most.
- UBank Visa debit card - I got the new card a few weeks before we left. The new app didn't have a way of informing about overseas travel, so I didn't bother telling them and they blocked my card eventually and sent me an SMS, but they automatically unblocked it when I replied to confirm it was me. Free international transactions, no fees show up in transaction history.
Some notes:
- As far as I can tell I was never charged any surcharges for paying with card by vendors.
- I did a sample of calculating the exchange rate on some of the transactions and it always appeared to be about the mid market rate. A couple times I was offered to be charged in Australian dollars and the rate was always worse.
- A couple times I was asked to show them the symbols on my card to see if they support it.
- Even for relatively small amounts I was still sometimes asked if I want to do it as a single payment (一括), I always said yes, but would be interested if there is any benefit splitting it on a non-Japanese card.
- A few times inserting card would error and I'd have to try again. On self serve machines this is kind of annoying as you have to call staff over.
- I didn't use any of the payment apps. The only one I was able to setup successfully was Line Pay, but paying with card seemed easier and the only benefit with the apps seemed to be accumulating points and I didn't think it would be worth it for a short trip. Support also varied between stores. I'd be interested to hear other opinions.
- We were able to load an existing Suica onto my wife's iPhone, but weren't able to charge it with any of our cards. Also note not all the machines can charge mobile Suica.
As a result of mostly paying by card I only used ATMs twice. Once with AEON which allowed up to 50,000 yen, with no fees on the Japan side and $5 by ING that was rebated. With 7-11 ATM I was charged 220 yen on the Japan side (for up to 100,000 yen, I think it was 110 yen for below 10,000 yen) and $5 again by ING, both rebated.
If anyone has any other tips, I'd love to hear them for next time.
I remember Suica being far more prominent than you have suggested. It was accepted in 7-Elevens and Lawsons and various vendors around (but not large department stores for example). Was very convenient when added to iPhone (mobile pay wasn't as common back then) and was able to top it up on iPhone directly no problem with saved debit card.
Payment surcharge seems to be a very Australian thing unfortunately. Not permitted in the UK or EU, don't think I remember it in USA(?), not in Asia or Middle East or anywhere else really…