Hello people! Newcomer here to Tokyo!
I have noticed that there are very few places around where I live and Tokyo in general that accept contactless payments and cards in general. This has forced me to go back to cash. Not only that, but coins seem to be a big thing here, at least in my experience! This have led me to stacking up quite a lot of coins and I want to put them to use instead of just having them laying at home. My question is; Is there a way for me to top up my virtual PASMO card with cash? I have noticed that the train stations have machine were you can top up if you have a physical card. But is it possible with a virtual as well?
Save me from this cash-misery and help a fellow redditor out! Much appreciated!
6 comments
Virtual meaning your phone or watch? Most big stations have a charge stations where you just place card/phone/watch on the IC reader.
you can do it at 7-11 ATMs
Some machines have a charge station for phones, or else I believe 7-11 atms can also charge digital IC cards. Other conbini atms may have the same but I’ve just always done it at 7-11. I believe you have to at least have bills there though, but once you get used to it you probably won’t have as many coins anyway. I very rarely have more than 700-800 yen in a few coins.
For Bills you can do it at 7-11. For Coins, there are machines at stations but not all of them support contact less option only the one where you can place your horizontally(laying down not inserting). You can put your phone there by open Apply pay app and there is an option for top up with the amount inserted instead of 1000/2000 etc.
Btw these machines except only 10¥ or bigger coins. For smaller coins i use them to pay for my groceries in the super market.
Something like this? (I haven’t used it)
https://www.pocket-change.jp/en/
That’s strange, my AU pay been serving me quite well here at Hachioji. It’s actually pretty rare nowadays for me to use cash for payment.
But yeah I feel you about coins, at fist I have hundreds of 1 yen in my room, then decided to go to 7-11 and dump all my coins there for strong zero, so my purchase is justified hahaha.
For train station, if the machine is the “put the card on top of this reader” type, you can use your phone too.
Start prioritizing to use coins for your payment, you can also do like. Lets say you have to pay 457 yen, you pay with 1057 yen.