I arrived in Japan in 2015. I tried to get a credit card ever since because debit card (from Rakuten) isn’t working too well for online purchase and abroad.
After 8 years living in Japan and maybe more than 10 refusals, I finally got approved for a credit card, just before going to holiday!
Finally I can spend on the internet without going through hacks! Finally I can pay my hotels without dumping a pile of cash, going through gift cards, borrowing other people cards etc…
I could barely believe it, emotion, cry of joy, I felt accepted by society again! It’s party time!
Or so I thought… the monthly limit is 30万円, not even enough to settle the cost of my hotel stay abroad for my holiday. (around 2K USD)
No worry I thought! I will call them, asking them to bump the limit a little bit, as I am going to holiday I will need to spend some money.
Well no… they refused to change the monthly limit.
You, credit worthy people from reddit, in your experience, once you have a credit card, how long until they trust you to spend your own money? Is it easier to apply for a new credit card once you manage to get accepted once?
I am thinking of either stacking more cards, or apply to one with higher limit even if it has a high membership cost.
Have you any advice on that?
I was tempted to post this on r/JapanFinance, but I believe being able to pay for things is just more part of every day life than finance.
18 comments
From what I understand (having been refused my first application only recently), Japanese credit cards are paid off in full every month (as opposed to staggered repayments), so you’d probably have a hard time convincing any provider to up the limit beyond your monthly wage.
The limit isn’t monthly, it’s your limit in general.
You need to use the card to get them to trust you.
Would depend on your card but many of them do allow you to apply for a temporary increase in limit which is much more likely to be granted than a permanent increase in limit.
I would imagine it would take minimum of several months of payments >50% of your total limit to be considered for a bump in permanent limit.
I got a rakuten card, the limit started with 300,000, then after a few months they increased to 600,000, then 700,000, and early this year they increased to 1,000,000.
Even though I never asked to increase the limit and I barely use it that much. Just around 30,000 to 40,000 every month for 2 and half years. I got it late 2020.
Extra info: It’s the basic card with no annual fee.
Most credit cards don’t allow a request for an increase for at least 6 months after you receive them. They judged your credit and assigned what they thought was a fair limit, so this is understandable.
As others have said, you just need to responsibly use the card and your limit will increase.
My Amazon card gets regular bumps, as does my Rakuten card.
I got rakuten card as well, started with a 300k limit, and slowly over the course of about 8 months they got the limit up to 1m with constant usage. That’s the maximum for the free card and it’s easy to upgrade your card from there
When i was finally allowed to get a bank account (6 months after arrival!) i opened one with Shinsei. They have a “credit card” partner called Gaica and it’s simply a pre-paid credit card that i can load up directly from their website. Not as convenient as a good old north american credit card, but so far i’ve been able to use it in the exact same way as any other credit card. Im not sur of the limit allowed on said card, i’ve put a couple hundred $ on it….that’s as far as i’ve gone. No problem with it so far and works just fine.
Edit : Just checked the documentation, the limit is 1 million yen per transaction.
Is this not normal from where ya’ll are from?
In my experience in the US, if you don’t have an established credit score, you typically will only get around 2000-3000 usd as a limit until you establish a history of paying your bill on time and increase your credit score. You might get more from the start if your credit card is through your own personal bank though.
Honestly this whole post reads as baby’s first credit card. Especially with the whole “why can’t they trust me to spend MY MONEY” when no, a credit card it quite literally not YOUR money. Rakuten is paying for your goods and services with the agreement you will pay them back at the end of the month or they charge you interest because they want THEIR money.
Get a credit card or two from your home country.
You dont have a credit history. Why would they give you credit?
Rakuten approved my friend for a CC but only gave them a 1 Man limit. They have another card with 10 Man limit. Basically, Rakuten is desperate to have numbers on their books to make their business look good. They never increase the limit.
My rakuten card started at something like that, 300,000…. now it’s 2,000,000…. I never asked for an increase, I just used it regularly.
Probably took a year or two?
>> Finally I can spend on the internet without going through hacks! Finally I can pay my hotels without dumping a pile of cash, going through gift cards, borrowing other people cards etc…
I may be being ignorant here, but what do you mean by all this? Hacks, gift cards, borrowing people’s cards and stuff? I get that it’s preferable to pay for hotels with a credit card, but couldn’t you just buy stuff online with a normal debit card linked to your bank account…?
Pay the hotel fee partly in cash.
I believe Rakuten offers a temporary limit increase from the website e-navi, I don’t change cash limit at all and only increase card usage, for the reasons tab I write shopping/ business trip expenses. Usually get approved after 1 day
Hope this helps!
I may be woefully wrong and if so please do tell me, but as far as I know you can own foreign credit cards. Certainly didn’t seem to be a problem for many of my friends if they lived abroad even permanently. If there’s really no good credit card you can get approved for in Japan why not try your luck elsewhere and use a foreign one. It doesn’t work in all situations (esp. online Japan can be peculiar) but at least things like hotels ought to work and I do know for a fact that some chain stores also accepted my foreign credit card no questions asked. Your best bet is probably your original home country as I’m not entirely sure whether you can just apply for a credit card in a country you do not reside in and do not have citizenship for. Another possibility might be depato credit cards. I seem to recall an ad at Takashimaya with rather good conditions although there might be some catch like having to spend so and so much money there each year.
Is there a company that I can apply for without an phone interview?
Credit limits are kind of card dependent, on top of trust building. I’ve found that cards from SMCC tend to be pretty chill (Stuff like ANA, where you’re getting points due to travelling), but like I have a Yodobashi card with a 150k JPY limit.
Though ultimately a lot of it is about using the card and getting tagged as a high spender. I don’t know what the specific timings are that made it so I could start spending 400k in one go, but it happened. And of course debit cards tend to have less issues cuz the money leaves your account immediately.