Myths die hard, especially Western Japanese myths. Mostly because somebody doesn’t want them to. They are the proverbial rice bowl of hack foreign journalists who can’t be bothered doing research, or acknowledging changing times. Far too easy to spin the same old comforting myths for western readers. Comforting because it makes them feel superior. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to the myth of Japanese addiction to cash. Nowhere better illustrated by the smug incompetence of the July 2019 Financial Times article, “The painful path of curing Japan of its cash addiction“.
This was 3 years after the debut of Apple Pay Suica with payments landscape in the middle of a great transformation thanks to Apple Pay, QR and PayPay, the Japanese government cashless payment tax rebate campaign, and let’s not forget 2 years of COVID induced mass hysteria. Needless to say, the Financial Times piece was quickly, and deservedly forgotten.
Now that inbound tourists are flooding into Japan again, thanks to the cheap yen, folks are finally noticing the myth of Japanese cash addiction does’t match Japanese payments reality in the checkout lane:
The whole “Japan is a cash based economy” is incredibly out of date.
I went last April.
The vast majority of my purchases were done either via card, or via tapping my phone. I needed cash for temple donations and some museums.
Even some museums and small mom and pops now take the native IC cards for payment (PASMO, Suica) in addition to cash, so l almost always used my Suica that I had loaded on my phone for transport. Vending machines of course accept IC cards and don’t bother with buying subway tickets just pay with your IC card and go.
My only large cash expenditure was a temple stay out in the boonies and a personal guide I hired for an evening.
I ventured from Tokyo to Nikko to Kyoto and areas around Kyoto and up into the Kiso Valley and never had any issues.
Reddit
I quote posted it to X, reaction was immediate. Everybody had an opinion about the state of Japanese payments from ‘yeah, it’s changed a lot’ to ‘Japan is still addicted to cash because I can’t go cashless like I can in the UK.’ Going completely cashless was never the point. The point being that it has changed tremendously. The change being that Japanese are now addicted to points and using cash doesn’t earn points.
Reading all the comments was great fun but I couldn’t help feel we are reliving a 2010 Thoughts on Flash moment. Just like many people refused to believe that Flash was clearly dying as Steve Jobs said it was, many people refuse to believe the myth of Japan is addicted to cash myth is dying.
Believe me, it’s dead. The ones saying the myth is alive are people who lived in Japan but don’t anymore. As I said in a post, if you can’t see the profound post 2016 changes of Apple Pay JP, the QR mobile payment app boom, JP cashless rebate campaign and COVID…..nothing will change your opinion of payments in Japan.
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