Figured out why foreign visa cards do not work to recharge PASMO/SUICA on iphones

It has to do with “3d secure” also known as “verified by visa” or “visa secure” for cards that operate through the visa network.

3d secure is a voluntary security measure that merchants can decide to require prior to completing an online purchase. Kind of like a CAPTCHA, 3d secure is intended to ensure a transaction made online is being made by the actual card owner through an authentication process.

Pasmo and Suica implemented 3d secure requirements a while back. Part of this is a general trend in Japan to require 3d secure for non-Japanese online transactions. If you have ever tried to book disneyland tickets and failed due to the disneyland online registration system not allowing the use of your card, this is likely the same reason why.

For Pasmo and Suica, Apple Pay was one of the few exceptions that previously did not require validation via the credit card issuer’s 3d secure authentication process. This is likely because Apple had their own measures which were equivalent. Since last month, it seems both Pasmo and Suica started enforcing 3d secure authentication requirements if you used a non-Japanese credit card on Apple Pay.

The authentication process is different for each card network. As I mentioned before, Visa has what is called “verified by visa” or “visa secure”. Mastercard has SecureCode and Amex has Safekey. Each are different authentication protocols. It seems Mastercard and Amex implement automated systems that do not require manual authentication. I am guessing whatever glitch they had with mastercard, they troubleshooted away in a couple weeks.

Unfortunately, Chase and several other credit card issuers (banks) that partnered with Visa agreed to an onerous authentication process if the vendor requires 3d secure authentication to make a purchase. Not sure why, but reading how this has prevented many other people from making purchases all over the world, not just in Japan, it could be something to do with the agreement between the banks and Visa.

For those that use a Chase card or some other bank with similar restrictions, the customer needs to manually call the credit card company to authenticate the vendor prior to purchase.

The banks have no way for you to nullify 3d secure requirements as it is a voluntary requirement of the merchant, not the banks.

The visa card issuers could make the process easier like those partnered with amex or mastercard. But this issue predates the current snafu with pasmo/suica and they dont care enough to negotiate with visa to develop a simpler process.

This, of course, makes the whole point of using apple pay to charge a transit card too onerous for daily use.

You can try to call customer service but they won’t see the transactions at all and most of the regular customer service reps won’t be familiar with this issue since most of their clients do not face this problem.

You can only find this stuff out talking with the “3d secure”/“verified by visa” security team/reps who have like one person on staff at any given day. So good luck with that. They also won’t allow you to blanket authorize Pasmo or Suica for 3d secure authentication and it seems they require a verification per purchase.

If anyone else is more familiar with the 3d secure authentication process and/or have been successful in convincing the bank security team to blanket authorize, please let me know.

(I posted this on r/japanlife but I thought it would be best to post it here as well)

https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/xhgf5t/figured_out_why_foreign_visa_cards_do_not_work_to/