Japanese who love to use cash embrace ‘ sweep ‘ QR code, Chinese tourists help a lot

Japan is an unabashed cash country.
In Japan, ATMs can be found everywhere, and ticket vending machines also accept a variety of face value banknotes, even online shopping, users also tend to choose cash on delivery and convenience store pay.

For a long time, Japan, as a developed country, has been stagnant in the development of cashless payment business. Cashless payments are still hard to come by in Japan. Why are the Japanese still keen to use cash?




Aside from the fact that old habits die hard, the reason is that cash still provides consumers with a strong sense of security as a hedge against economic risk. By contrast, China’s current popularity of mobile payments does seem to have changed the direction of the consumerist tide.

About 80% of Japanese retail transactions still use cash. This is because cash in Japanese entities is an integral part of life. The Japanese government is pushing for a cashless society to make the economy more consumer-friendly and increase productivity.

Boston consulting group (BCG) estimates that Japan’s cash settlement ratio is as high as 65%, double the average in developed countries, and it spends as much as 2 trillion yen a year on ATM management, cash transportation and other costs.
The government wants to double the proportion of cashless domestic settlements by 2025, but a natural distrust of financial services among Japanese, who have experienced an oil crisis, a bubble economy and a financial crisis,the innate notion of frugality in Japan also makes them very excluded from the impulse spending tendencies implied by credit cards and digital payments.




The benefits of cashless payments are obvious. It can reduce the cost of money production, recovery and management, and also effectively fight against money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes.

In addition, the non-use of cash settlement can also reduce the number of bank counters and ATMS, especially now that the shortage of labor in Japan is increasing, cash processing and the construction and maintenance of the corresponding infrastructure will require a lot of manpower.

The negative interest rate policy introduced by the bank of Japan in 2016 also puts Japanese Banks under great profit pressure, and they are in urgent need of improving business efficiency and optimizing personnel structure.



But Japanese consumers struggle to understand the drawbacks of cash payments, as the country’s entire payment environment is built on cash payments, and even credit and debit cards have little to do with it. After all, no business, especially the boss of a small business, is willing to pay exorbitant fees to banks.




In addition, Japan’s “card culture” is deeply rooted.

Japan’s transportation card (suica) has far exceeded the concept of transportation card, in transportation, retail, service, supermarket and other fields can be basically used, the basic coverage of the whole territory. With this card, there seems to be nothing wrong with mobile payment.

In addition to the bank account theft, small and medium-sized bank collapse of the event occurs, but also let them hold tight the money bag, that money is no where their home security.



In addition, Japan is prone to natural disasters, earthquakes, torrential rains, typhoons, floods once occurred, electricity supply may be disrupted, cash transactions are relatively more convenient way.
Many Japanese are reluctant to take the step of using mobile payments, mainly out of concern about privacy leaks, personal consumer behavior data is collected by internet companies, and through personalized advertising, push to make use of it, so that they feel as if they have become “transparent people.”

Many people believe that Japan does not have mobile payment technology, if introduced, the Japanese will also like mobile payment.

But in fact, many of these technologies used in mobile payments, including prepaid mobile wallets, NFC payment chips and standards, and now the most common QR codes for payments, are actually the first to emerge from Japan, or was gradually promoted.

However, as the number of Chinese tourists coming to Japan has increased, all this is quietly changing. Chinese tourists are using their smartphones to ignite the Japanese’s enthusiasm for digital payments.



Today’s hotels, convenience stores and tourist attractions in major Japanese cities are not hard to see as a sign of Alipay and WeChat payments from China.

In 2018, the number of Chinese tourists to Japan exceeded 8 million, with spending of 14 billion us dollars, accounting for 27 percent and 34.1 percent of the total respectively.

Huge demand has led Japanese businesses to start looking at the digital payment methods that Chinese tourists are used to using.




Chinese tourists “buy and buy” enthusiasm, so that Japanese internet companies see the promotion of barcode payment business opportunities.

Yahoo Japan and Japanese instant messaging software Line respectively with alipay and WeChat pay the cooperation, businesses can use special flicking code editor or code application to respond to customers through the Line and WeChat initiate payment requests, yahoo Japan and softbank group launched the PayPay mobile payment application is implemented with Alipay
service cooperation, recently it has just entered the 1.5 Japan Lawson convenience store.

The tourism consumption driven by Chinese tourists started the “I sweep you” consumption culture in Japan. With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics on the way, Japan also needs to accelerate its cashless payment environment to meet the needs of foreign tourists while allowing locals to embrace the true convenience of digital payments.

Promoting the spread of cashless payments requires creating an environment that can be used by anyone, at any time, and changing consumers’ ingrained spending habits, which is the challenge in every country.