As many of you are aware, there’s an ongoing issue of not being able to recharge SUICA via Apple/Google Pay with non-JP VISA cards. However, my friend who is visiting from the USA was able to recharge his iPhone’s SUICA using a USA VISA **while still in the USA**. However, when he arrived in Japan and tried to add more funds with the same card, it failed and he switched to a USA Mastercard and it worked… This leads me to believe that the recharging transaction was location dependent…
The reason I ask, I was able to recharge my Garmin watch with a USA issued AMEX via Google Pay, and am wondering if I will be charged a Foreign Transaction Fee (FTF) **if I recharge the SUICA while I am physically located Japan**, as it did NOT charge me the FTF while I performed the transaction in the USA.
Thanks in advance!
1 comment
>However, when he arrived in Japan and tried to add more funds with the same card, it failed and he switched to a USA Mastercard and it worked…
Nope, probably he did it back in the USA while foreign Visa still worked, and the Suica-Visa outage happened sometime between then and when he got to Japan. It’s a fairly well-known issue at this point, no foreign Visa cards work for reloading Suica anymore.
Similarly, the merchant info is passed through when using Apple or Google Pay, so it’ll show up as a transaction from Japan no matter where you are. If you weren’t charged a FTF, then your card doesn’t have one (in the AmEx USA lineup, only the Everyday and cashback cards have FTF, everything else does not).