In the US my wife and I found it convenient to have a shared credit card. It was technically under my name, but they also issued a second card with the same CC number/expiration/etc. to her, with her name printed on the front. All spending went to the same credit card account so we could easily track every month how much we spent on shared expenses. (Like meals, furniture, subscriptions, etc.)
Are there any companies that offer this service in Japan? I found a lot of “family card” offers, but I think they are a separate credit card number. (Also, I tried to fill out the Saison family card application and got stuck when it wouldn’t let me fill in a different last name for my wife.)
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Yes, I think it is standard. At least is it standard for my very standard credit card. There’s also a family option offered by mine.
Pretty much all of the credit cards in Japan have the option to issue family cards. They are different numbers but come out of the same account and share the same credit limit.
>but they also issued a second card with the same CC number/expiration/etc. to her, with her name printed on the front.
Are you really sure about that? Because I had plenty of credit cards in the US and had cards on the same accounts issued for my wife to use, and they _never_ had the same account number and expiration date. That doesn’t even work with the verification systems, since they expect a single name to match a number.
>I found a lot of “family card” offers, but I think they are a separate credit card number.
Yes. Because that’s how family credit cards work both here and in the US. Each card has a unique number.
Family cards can have different last names. It’s common practice that most banks here support. The cards will likely have the same expiration date but the number will be different.
For family cards, the primary account owner can see all charges across all cards while the secondary card holders can only see their own charges.
Is there any reason why you would want or expect the number to be the same?