Accepting Payments in Japan

merchant account in Japan

[ReInvent]

Hi,

I have a client who wants to sell his products in Japan. They are all digital.

Has anyone know a service which will allow me to accept credit card payments and bank transfers in Japanese.

I am currently looking at Worldpay.com but they have a very expensive.

Anyone have any experiences taking orders from Japan in JPY?

[jeffposaka]

There are some services but they require to have a bank account setup in Japan. They wiil not send the money to a non Japanese bank account. This was the last time I checked (6 months ago), if there are any new services I would be happy.

Otherwise you need to use World Pay. Make sure you accept JCB. There are more JCB users in Japan than Amex in the whole world.

[Leggewie]

Worldpay/Bibit/RBS is the worst company I ever experienced. Totally incompetent and unmotivated people. Total lack of response to really serious issues (such as not accepting UTF-8 and lost payments) despite the client I was consulting for had to be one of their biggest accounts.

Unfortunately there is not much of an alternative for what they offer. If you are taking the Japanese market serious (and you should, otherwise it is better to just stay out) I would think about other options if I were in your shoes.

Since you mention bank transfer. Maybe they fixed their procedure by now. But at the time I was dealing with them, their processes were an absolute joke and frequently payments were "lost".

[edited by: Leggewie at 8:32 pm (utc) on Nov. 29, 2007]

[ReInvent]

Leggewie

Do you have any other option ideas?

I think what we are going to do right now is go with Paypal Pro Payment for a few months until we can open an account in Japan.

With paypal we will not be able to handle bank transfers but can accept most of the major credit cards used in Japan.(JBC,Visa MC)

any other thoughts or ideas?

[bill]

When did PayPal finally [google.com] get their full Japanese version going? I don't use them much, but all of a sudden they're sending me bilingual mail and redirecting me to Japanese versions. It's about $*&#ing time!

[ReInvent]

bill-paypal got there act together sometime in March, I think I might go with them so I will let you know how it goes.

I understand that bank transfers are pretty big in Japan, any idea of how much this hurts sales not to have it?

Also while I am off topic, where can I buy Japanese charter domain names?

I think I am going to go with goaddy for my .jp domain, any thoughts on that?

[bill]

I understand that bank transfers are pretty big in Japan, any idea of how much this hurts sales not to have it?

Other threads we've had on this topic have all indicated that options for payment in Japan [google.com] need to include the bank transfer.

[Leggewie]

The only option I can think of is setting up your own bank account in Japan. But that entails setting up a real company in Japan.

[ReInvent]

I have thought about setting up a business but haven't had any luck finding any resources online to assist me in doing that.

[a2ztranslate]

Setting up a company in Japan is not a cheap process; various registration fees etc. plus the need to have a nominated representative currently resident in Japan do make things a bit tricky. in order to accept bank payments, you can of course give details of your e.g. US bank account for payments via Wire transfer. You could also open a personal account at a bank in Japan and use that for accepting payments from clients. The other option you can use is if you have an account with one of the big internationals (Citibank, HSBC etc.)they do permit multi-currency accounts, so you could be using an e.g Citibank account in yen for receiving funds from your Japanese clients.

[ReInvent]

a2ztranslate

Thanks for the info and the insight...

I thought about setting up bank account with Citibank but if my account isn't in Japan I thought that the wire/bank transfers would be expensive...my products only sell between 6,000-10,000 yen.

[Leggewie]

my suspicion is that the only way to have a completely "local-feel" bank account is indeed the local bank account. Citibank et al. will not be the same. For a truly local account, you will need to follow the tedious process as described by a2ztranslate. I don't think there is a way around it. If there is, let me know. That really is the catch for doing business in Japan. It is not easy or rather close to pointless without some form of presence in Japan.

[edited by: Leggewie at 5:07 pm (utc) on Dec. 3, 2007]

[a2ztranslate]

I do have clients who offer credit card, Paypal and bank transfer to an offshore bank account for their online sales. I know they do lose some sales because they don't have a local bank for local bank transfers (we process their JP email enquiries), but then again some customers do go ahead with a wire transfer payment as well. Typical wire transfer costs at the sender end from a JP bank are around 2500 - 3000 yen, so if your product is price competitive enough it still makes sense for a JP client to go ahead with a payment in this manner.

That said we are seeing the % of payments made by credit card increasing steadily over time.