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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

In Japan right now and hardly anywhere seems to take card. It's a very cash focused society in my opinion, but really it's impossible to tell what would make sense to Japanese people, everything here can feel almost deliberately contrary at times; they eat KFC on Christmas day, all the locks turn anti-clockwise to open and people aren't fat despite massive amounts of refined carbs.

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Really? I use my credit card for maybe 70% of my spendings. It's true you absolutely need to have cash on you for the occasions when you can't use it but I can buy a 30 yen chocolate bar in every convenience store here. Compare that to Germany where I think no supermarket takes credit cards and even to use electronic cash you have to spend a minimum amount.

Almost every German supermarket takes credit cards usually without a minimum amount. I use mine to pay for almost everything.

Oh interesting, I didn't know. A lot must have changed in the last couple years. I was just there this month and didn't notice any credit card logos at the checkouts and just assumed they still weren't accepted.

IIRC in an earlier thread about this someone said that things changed quickly in Germany once the EU started enforcing lower interchange fees.

And, more to the point, they all take debit cards, and have all accepted debit cards for many years.

Germany is against credit, rather than electronic transactions.

In Holland you can usually use your card (debit) for everything, even at festivals, food trucks, café's, etc. using a mobile pin machine. In Berlin, on the other hand, even most small shops only accept cash. Now perhaps this is Berlin-specific, but it's still fascinating to me how culturally-specific these things can remain even in today's world.

I guess you aren't sight seeing and going restaurants which is mostly what I'm doing while on holiday here.

Very few tourist attractions and restaurants take card payments.

I have yet to find a restaurant where the ticket would be over ¥1500 per person that does not take cards. Acceptance signs are not everywhere, but nearly everywhere takes cards.

Yes, tourist attractions do not, but in many cases you can use an IC card for those. The "Japan is only a cash society" canard should die - do you need cash? Yes, but there is a thriving credit card (and basically ubiquitous IC card) payment ecosystem.

As a completely random sample the Italian restaurant I'm in right now is going to cost about 4000¥ each and doesn't take card payments ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That just means it's authentic Italian. :)

It was fantastic actually :-)

> Acceptance signs are not everywhere

This bears repeating. Lots of places have no card logos anywhere but if you ask if you can pay by card they'll pull up a reader from under the desk

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