The best way to deal with 2FA in Japan (USA)

16 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **The best way to deal with 2FA in Japan (USA)**

   Hello,

   I am moving to Tokyo in few weeks and I’m just wondering what people have done with their phone number before leaving.

   The reason why I am asking is because I have Chase bank account and Fidelity for Investment. And I know when you try to log in or take any action, they ask for 2 Factor Authorization (asking for pin number) sent to your phone number.

   I did my research. Some say use Google FI or Google Voice or some even said just change your phone carrier to something low budget. I’m just not sure what would be the most ideal way out of all of these options and wanted to seek for some opinions from the real people.

   Thanks!

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2. Will your banks accept a foreign number on the account so you can still use 2FA with a Japanese phone number? Because if so, you could keep your American sim for a few weeks while in Japan, set up a Japanese phone plan and SIM card, switch to the US card and authenticate to get in, and then change the information to your Japanese number so there hopefully wouldn’t be problems.

   My American bank would not accept a foreign number on the account andI didn’t find out until after I got to Japan and it has created major problems for me ever since. Ask your banks directly before you go. I hope others will have better and more complete advice for you for what to do in the latter situation. Good luck!

3. kept my American SIM via eSIM, and use a physical JP SIM card. This is pretty much the only way until everything supports 2FA via something like Authy.

   There’s potentially some really roundabout things you can do using SMS forwarding but it still involves an American SIM somewhere in the critical path.

4. Wherever possible, first of all I recommend switching your accounts to use an actual MFA app like Google Authenticator instead of a phone number. Not only is it more secure, you also won’t need to do anything when you move. Past that, for the few vendors that didn’t support MFA apps, I ported my number to VoIP.ms with great success. That said I’m Canadian and would have probably used Google Voice instead if it was available here.

   One option if you want to front load the work…get a VoIP number before moving and change your accounts over. You can still optionally port your actual cell number later, but getting a VoIP number in advance spreads the work out.

5. As others have noted, for sure move as many accounts as you can to 2FA that doesn’t rely on SMS. (Fidelity uses VIP Access rather than the standard six-digit rotating code.)

   Unfortunately, especially for financial institutions, this isn’t always supported.

   YMMV, but what I did was port my number to Google Voice, and it has worked fine with all of my accounts online so far. So whenever I need to get a text to log in, I just check Google Voice, and so far everything has gone through. No guarantees this will work, though, since I’m told that some institutions will recognize that the number is no longer tied to a physical carrier, and reject it.

   I wrote about the experience here: [https://simon.voyage/2023/08/03/porting-a-cell-phone-abroad/](https://simon.voyage/2023/08/03/porting-a-cell-phone-abroad/)

   Feel free to ask me any questions.

6. Chase doesn’t like Google Voice. I had the same problem, I live in Japan and my Google Voice stopped working on day. I searched on Reddit and found others had the same problem of [Chase not allowing Google Voice](https://www.reddit.com/r/Googlevoice/comments/tmhpwy/chase_bank_doesnt_work_with_text_to_gvoice_anymore/).

   I don’t have my Chase account anymore, but I believe the options of emailing the code or using a MFA app like Google Authenticator were options.

   Now, I just have two phones, one USA and one Japanese. Both are iPhones, I just leave my USA phone in my apartment with Wifi Calling turned on, but I enabled the settings for “Text Messaging Forwarding” to all my other Apple devices.

   If you switch your phone to something low budget, make sure you understand the international fees or if they support wifi calling and texting.

7. Check with your bank and see if you have other options than just an SMS, which really is not the recommended method to authenticate. Maybe consider changing to a bank that has other options that work for you too. I was able to set up a Yubikey to use for authentication with my US bank.

8. Move everything you can to a non-sms 2FA, then park your number on Google Voice so you can receive texts. Costs around $20 to transfer the number but no cost to receive texts.

   I prefer to use Aegis to store 2FA codes and back it up to a few different places regularly.

9. I am not a “resident” of Japan yet until January, but I “moved” here until then on tourist Visa.

   I ported my number to Tello to retain SMS via Wifi calling. So far, I have not run into any issues with 2FA for my Accounts at Fidelity, Schwab, Goldman or for banks accounts at Chase and USAA. I use a Ubigi Esim for Data and the Tello ESIM piggy backs off the data for SMS and calling. This is on an unlocked iPhone 14 pro

10. I use my Google voice number but it’s a legacy number. It might be different with the newer numbers.

11. Before you leave, set up a low-cost number. There are several options, but I recommend this one:

    https://www.target.com/p/freedompop-sim-kit-100-free-wireless-service/-/A-88685142

    You can send and receive SMS and even make calls for free to the US when you enable WiFi calling.

    I converted mine to eSIM on my iPhone. Just enable it when you want to receive a message. Very convenient.

    Other options are Ultra PayGo ($3/month) and RedPocket ($30/year with eBay special offer).

    r/NoContract is a good resource to learn more.

12. I moved to Google voice

13. I’ve used Google voice but not everything will work with it. Recently I’ve switched to Tello. You can get cheap plans with eSims that are voice and SMS only for a few bucks a month. It doesn’t have roaming but you can enable WiFi Calling so that you can get text messages and calls while at home (or any WiFi network) so far I haven’t encountered any roadblocks with 2FA as it’s listed as a legit mobile number, plus I can just temporarily change my plan to have data for times when I go back to the states.

14. Pay 20 dollars to port your number to google voice.

15. Whatever you do, don’t use Google Voice #s, it’s highly prone to getting banned by services due to Google’s basically zero fucks given about SMS spam originating from its service.

    I used a “no free” cell phone service for years. So I only paid for calls I took/texts I received. It worked fantastically. The only US account I have now is Fidelity and I use their app for 2FA and we use Zoom or Facetime to talk to family.

16. Ported my US number to Google Voice. Only had one service not accept it for 2FA anymore.