Japan’s cash-free payment ratio has fallen sharply behind China and South Korea, Japanese media: anxiety heats up

Guide: Japan’s cash-for-money ratio rose slightly to 20% in 2016, but it is far from the government’s target of “reaching 40% by 2027”, and there is a warming of anxiety within the government.

Japanese media said the use of credit cards or electronic money to pay for “no cash payments” in Japan has not been popularized.

In the context of a non-cash payment ratio of more than 50% in major countries, Japan is only 20%.

The Japan Government is concerned that such a situation would miss the shopping opportunities and the convenience of shoppers who used to use credit cards to visit Japan.

In the anxiety of Japan’s Ministry of Economic and Industrial province, proposed through tax concessions and subsidies to change the Japanese focus on “cash-oriented” program.

According to the Japanese economic news website June 14, Japan’s economic and industrial province for the summary of cash-free payment of the popularization policy, the establishment of the government, enterprises, academics formed by the association.

In 2015, when comparable with the international community, Japan’s cashless payments were 18 per cent, a quarter of South Korea’s (89 per cent) and significantly lower than China’s (60 per cent) and the UK’s (55 per cent), the report said.

Japan’s cash-for-money ratio rose slightly to 20% in 2016, but it is far from the government’s target of “reaching 40% by 2027”, and there is a warming of anxiety within the government.

In terms of cash payments, there are projections showing that Japan’s annual cash transportation and the setting up of ATM and other circulation costs as high as 8 trillion yen.

In addition, the burden of retail stores is also heavy. According to the Nomura Institute of Japan, the average store needs 2.5 hours a day to count cash at the cashier’s desk. This is not a small burden for the increasingly understaffed shops.

Even so, Japan’s cash-free payments are still hard to popularize, due to the fact that cash gives consumers a strong sense of reassurance.

In addition, there are ATM machines everywhere in Japan, and there is no inconvenient problem. However, foreigners do not think so.

A survey by Visa, a major US credit card company, found that about 40% of visitors to Japan were dissatisfied with the use of cash only in retail outlets.

There are also projections that if Japan’s 2020-year visit to the number of visitors to the government’s target of 40 million people, because does not support the absence of cash settlement caused by tourists do not buy the opportunity loss will reach 1.2 trillion yen.

The Japan Credit Card Association proposed that “in order to obtain the implementation of the Xinmin law, the increase in the number of young tourists and overseas tourists, should draw up the local city of cash-free payment to promote policy.” This is because with the popularity of accommodation, there will be an increase in the chances of foreigners using credit cards to visit local cities.

Reported that in Japan’s local cities, many retail outlets are unable to use credit cards, expanding support for credit card clearing the number of stores became a topic.

Due to the use of credit card clearing a part of sales as a handling fee to the credit card companies, many shops on the introduction of credit card settlement attitude negative.

Credit card handling fee is too high is the implementation of a cash-free payment of one of the difficulties-according to the Japanese Ministry of Economic and Trade tourism destination of the survey conducted by the investigation shows that 42% of the shop reflects the high card handling fees.

The new agreement will discuss the adoption of budget measures to subsidize some credit card fees and reduce the burden on retail stores.

The report also said that Japan would study the case of South Korea at the taxation level.

The South Korean government’s 1999 policy to deduct 20% of its credit card consumption from individual taxable income has boosted the country’s credit-card consumption to 7 times-fold in 3 years.

Japan will discuss similar deductions, and would like to reflect the proposed budget proposals and tax correction requirements for 2019.

However, there are cautious opinions about the fairness of the move, such as Japan’s finance ministry.