I was enjoying a succulent Chinese meal this evening. I went to pay, and said I’d like to pay with VISA. The person who was settling my bill said no this machine doesn’t accept touch pay.
**Edit**: via phone. Sorry I wrote this while going home. I realize this was a key detail
I pointed out to them that the symbol means it will read a touch chip. Again vehemently against even trying. This goes on for a few more seconds until her husband just tells her to do it to prove this guy(me) wrong.
I touch my phone to the reader, lo and behold it read…printed a receipt and everything. We looked at each other, me confused how any of this had to be any more complicated than it was, and they that this card reader that they have had all this time can accept payments like that…
33 comments
Reminds me of this time when I went to Kyushu, stopped in a pizzeria, asked no cheese on the pizza (because I can’t eat cheese). Waiter comes back with Manager and Manager was like: it’s going to burn the pizza. I asked them to try it out and I’m okay to eat burned pizza and they said:
無理です、すみません。 Incredible.
[edit] Never though I would have to do that but so many people are not aware that a pizza without cheese is called Marinara. It’s the simplest form of pizza but also the hardest because you can’t hide the taste with some cheese on top. Go eat one at Savoy, Pizza Marumo or any decent pizza shop in Tokyo if you haven’t.
Nothing Japan specific.
You can find people like this everywhere.
Ah yes. I see you know your judo well.
This is democracy manifest.
GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY PENIS!!
I’ve actually had this exact conversation at least 5 times at different establishments.
To be fair, most POS systems i’ve seen have had the touch to pay logo on them for almost a decade, but it’s only been possible to actually use it in the last 2 years or so.
It happens to be quite a bit too. The lock on peoples faces when I pay with my watch is just astounding. Honestly like I’d just performed a miracle.
My advice, don’t ask anymore, just say you’ll pay with credit card and quickly swipe it.
There are entire dissertations written on how Japan embodies a ‘process driven’ business mentality.
A: We do it this way.
B: Why?
A: Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.
B: Let’s try this new way that could be better.
A: No. We do it this way.
For whatever reason, a good chunk of the readers that have the touch symbol on them actually do not work with touch. I sometimes ignore the cashier and try, but no dice. There’s probably some actual underlying reason such as the card companies charging higher fees for touch payments.
ive ran into this a lot but the problem seems to be different than ‘oh Japanese people can’t think’ stuff people like to complain about on this sub
sometimes they got so many issues with the card reader that they just turn it off/disable it. The guy Maybe didn’t know why and was just told that policy by management
Who cares? Just pay and leave
Could it be that it costs the business a higher fee to use pay wave? Where I’m from some places have added a surcharge to use pay wave.
Sounds like you were the one being persistent to not just do it how the person running the restaurant was asking you to.
oh no, not a *change* – anything but something DiFfErEnT!!! madness…
I was trying to exit a toll road a few years ago and didn’t have enough cash on me. Figured I’d use my Australian debit card which (unlike my Japanese debit card at the time) worked basically everywhere (including places that only accept ‘credit’ cards).
The guy at the toll booth took my card and was about to process it when he noticed the word ‘Debit’ printed on it. He immediately apologised and said that only credit cards are accepted. I didn’t have a credit card at the time. I tried explaining that it was an international card and should work, and asking him to just give it a try, but he simply wouldn’t budge. Ended up having to pull into the office and wait around 20 minutes while they prepared a bill. I couldn’t understand why the guy wouldn’t just try the card given that the worst case would be that the card was declined.
This happens quite often out in the Inaka. It’s funny how this technology that has been out in the uk since around 2014 is finally catching on in Japan.
So many times I’ve seen this. Will ask them to try it next time.
I’ve had ojisans working at the conbini mystified that apple pay works exactly like a credit card. It’s just a way of the land.
I personally love how “touchless” or “touch-free” became “touch” in Japan.
> succulent Chinese meal
‘GET YOUR HAND OFF MY PENIS’
And on the other hand, my local supermarket has Visa touch logo for the long, long time but the POS system doesn’t support it. I tried, many people tried, so much that they have to cover the logo to prevent confusion. And one they they updated the POS system and have another sign that they now support touch.
So having the logo doesn’t necessarily mean touch is supported 🙂
For me, my foreign card doesn’t do touch in Japan for some reason so I always tell them I’ll come over to pay and they’re like “no no.” Then two seconds later they come over and tell me my card doesn’t work and to try another. A few minutes go by with me having to fight the staff to let me stand up and come over to the reception desk or bar. they acquiesce and *presto* pin and done. Lol
Once this young clerk got so overwhelmed when the card reader asked if wanted to pay mark up in my currency or in yen and started to cry, cancelled the transaction and got a manager to finish it for me. It was shocking how helpless some staff seem when confronted by a situation outside the ordinary.
I am traveling in in Korea and my card with the contactless symbol works on the machines with the symbol but that same card stored in Apple Pay on my phone doesn’t work. The symbol does not necessarily mean it works with a phone.
To your specific example, the POS machines here have had that symbol for over a decade. However pay wave / tap to pay was not enabled by the payment system (visa / master / amex). You could only go through one of the domestic systems (ID, Edy, etc). I understand this to be for commercial reasons rather than technical reasons. Fairly recently (in the last 12 months) it has become available, and as I understand it, automatically enabled on machines with the function built in.
So my guess is that for the last 10 years these shop owners have had tourists seeing the sign and insisting it works, only to find it doesn’t. You may have been just another in a long line of people insisting it worked.
I don’t think there’s much more to it than that. The guy thought you were a know it all, but you got lucky and the system had changed.
Tell them your credit/debit card has covid and would like to do it touch-less
Maybe didn’t want to pay the CC fee and just wanted cash?
Many card machine providers, and even visa/mastercard themselves have a surcharge they apply to the merchant for contactless payment. Maybe they were trying to avoid this
I just got a new phone with Google Wallet and to be honest I’m as confused as the shop owners about this one.
Tried it out at family mart—where I know for a fact that it *should* work—by telling the guy “I want to pay with credit card” and it didn’t work. Next day, with a younger cashier, I actually asked her how to use the damn thing. Apparently, I have to specifically say “I want to pay with ‘id'”.
Btw Visa touch, etc are just not popular here. There are Japan specific contactless prepaid payment systems like Suica & Edy, but there are also systems for pay pay cards like iD and QuickPay. Visa touch (and whatever Mastercard and mastercard call theirs) came later and offer no advantage. In general they are less well known, and cost the shops a larger fee, and are lots will supported in Japan.
If you have a Japanese credit card, it probably sports iD or QuickPay, and you should use that. Store owners will often train their employees to ask people to use those instead of Visa Touch, and the employees may well not know why. When they say they don’t “support” something, it might not be a technical limitation.
(Or it could simply be poor training).
Places dealing with a lot of tourists are much more likely to activate support thinks like visa touch and Chinese specific payment methods, etc.
Either way, in not sure why it would be surprising that people don’t want to try something. If their boss told them “we don’t do x”, or the vendor of the terminal told them “we don’t support x”, then to them, they just don’t. It’s that simple. Also bear in mind that low level workers like cashiers are generally not allowed to deviate from their script.
Not that it applies particularly to this case because you still needed them to take action (set the machine) for you to take action (pay) and you couldn’t be proactive about it, BUT this is a good example of the kind of mentality that makes it pretty hard to do many things in Japan if you first ask for permission or ask if something is possible. Most likely answer: no. You just have to try doing it without asking – chances are it will be possible and nobody will be affected.
what’s the charge officer?!
I don’t know how correct this is but my husband said it costs businesses extra to use that feature which is why many don’t use it (sounds like bs to me though lol)