RResidents in Japan

Benefits for JCB card?

Just wondering is there a benefit for choosing JCB over Visa/Mastercard for your CC options?

My thought is that the latter is surely accepted anywhere while JCB is not. In that case why would I want to choose JCB given the option?

10 comments

  2. In Hawaii, the JCB card lets you ride a free trolley between Waikiki and the mall.

  3. The benefit is mostly for those planning on living in Japan forever. Everytime you use a master/visa you give money to an US company. Using a JCB card allows you to keep that money in Japan instead. Other than that I dont see much benefit.

    Edit: I myself made a JCB card which is my main card for shopping in Japan now. I kept the visa for purchase abroad. I did not feel any downside so far.

  4. Some cards are JCB only, and some merchants might not accept only JCB. Really depends on where you shop and what card you want.

    Costco is the example here where their branded credit cards are only Mastercard branded and they only accept Mastercard or cash in the store for payment.

  6. You can get discounts on JTBs super expensive tour offerings, so if you are an old fart that travels anywhere in a tour group I guess its worth to have a JCB card.

  7. I hadn’t been in Japan long enough so Aeon Mall gave me a JCB debit card not a Visa debit card (which is what I would have preferred). So you might have one out of necessity.

    Why Aeon? Because it is the only “bank” other than the post office within plausible walking distance and online services I tried objected to my having middle names. In the end the post office turned out to be easier, though of course I don’t get points :-).

  8. The benefit used to be that you couldn’t use a JCB card on a number of online sites and brick & mortar shops when you visited overseas, thus saving yourself money (I experienced this first hand). But to be fair, it’s much better than it used to be.

  9. If you go to stage plays, some do specific credit card balloting for tickets. JCB usually gets their own sets of tickets that you can ballot for and can sometimes be easier to hit for than non-credit card specific rounds of ballots. If you have multiple credit cards you can throw in ballots in different sets (eg one with Visa, one with MC, one with JTB). … Although if you’re into stage plays you might already know this lol

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