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Japan facing credit card number shortage

mainichi.jp

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Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#151

What's crazy is that we've had public key encryption for over 40 years, and we're still publishing magic numbers on little pieces of plastic that give whoever sees them the power to take all our money without our consent.

That’s very US centric. In every other place except America, credit card issuers mandate the use EMV’s and pin codes.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now all of the burden is on the credit card companies. Any fraud is their liability. Tell that to retailers who lose a gazillion dollars to fraud reversals every year.

then those merchants should use the widely popular 3d secure system, which lets you enter a pin. by using it, they are protected from reversals by the terms of service. so a system that prevents them losing a gazillion dollars is available, and they opt to instead lose the gazillion dollars. it's their fault, and they should lose that money. we don't need to tell them anything -we just need to point and laugh.

And then see customers complaining about the annoying extra steps. 3D Secure affects conversion rates adversely which means customers are generally happier without it and don't mind the fraud risk (as is consistent with the rest of this discussion on the thread).

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#153

Semi-off-topic, but does anyone know about the "churning" culture in Japan vs the US? What are the numbers? Here in the US you can generally expect sign up bonuses of a few hundred dollars, and a return of around 2% on your transactions, with category bonuses up to 5%. What do people get in Japan? I've just Googled it, and apparently some cards get 1 mile per 100 JPY (approximately 1%) - do some get more than that? W…

In Japan:

For no annual fee card, Signup bonus without paying is around 1000-9000 JPY depending on running campaign. Some cards also offers bonus with paying, rate is vary but around 4-20% and max bonus is around 2000-10000 JPY.

I'm not very familiar but for annual fee card, signup bonus without paying is around 5000-30000 JPY and bonus with paying is similar rate and max is around 10000-100000 JPY.

To get max bonus, you should use cashback sites.

For transaction bonus, 0.5% return is basic (card from bank, gold card, random shop's card), 1.0% is standard for return-oriented card (like Rakuten, d-card), 1.2%-1.5% is top return-oriented card (like Recruit). Most return-oriented card is no annual fee.

* Now 3% is super prominent top return rate by LINE Pay card (that's no annual fee) but it's run by campaign until 2021/05.

Cards for airline is different story, maybe 1mile/100 JPY is good return on annual fee card (I'm not familiar but IMO airline card isn't majority due to less people travel to overseas).

Transaction fee for merchant is rumored below 2% for big player (like 7-11), around 3% is standard for real shops. Old contract may charges much more fee.

Big difference with US is that Most cards is monthly-clear style so less revenue from revolving credit fee. Card issuers trying hard customers to using revolving payment.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#154

What's crazy is that we've had public key encryption for over 40 years, and we're still publishing magic numbers on little pieces of plastic that give whoever sees them the power to take all our money without our consent.

Why on earth would we want this? Right now all of the burden is on the credit card companies. Any fraud is their liability. If we switch things up, and implement something like passwords or pins, WE get the liability. That’s worse than our current situation. And given how badly people get hacked or phished, all it means is that consumers lose. Right now, those “magic little numbers” work great, and in the case of fra…

with the change to chip & pin the liability was moved from the credit card companies to the merchants. (this is why banks pushed for it so hard)

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#155
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming the last digit is a checksum and the first six are taken by the routing information, that leaves them 9 digits or a billion possible numbers per credit card issuer. Japan has a population of about 125 million. Are Japanese people cycling their numbers so frequently? Or are they big on ephemeral card numbers? Credit cards - and payment methods generally - are in their Cambrian explosion phase right now in J…

Ah, here's the real explanation! Interesting. I wonder how big the incentive is, and if anything changed to enable this. As for the incentive, I'd guess they get transaction fees cut from some ~2.75% to 0.5%ish with their own card, and then some kind of additional cash (maybe $50-$300?) from the issuing bank for gaining a customer?

I don't know why it's exploding, but it also appears poised to explode here in the US too. I recently got a recruiter in my inbox for a startup "Guild Credit" that makes loyalty CC cards easy to issue for small businesses. Not sure what has changed recently.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#156
post #4

Can Japan not obtain another country code from Visa/Mastercard (part of the first 6 digits)?

I assume that it could work as a temporary solution but the article hints that this problem will likely become global soon. So, instead of moving numbers, it's easier to add some and increase the possible combinations.

I think it's better (for Japan) to force it into a global problem than a domestic problem. Then more people will care about fixing it and the issuers will retain international interoperability.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#157
post #2

>the company decided to take makeshift measures such as reusing credit card numbers of discontinued cards after a certain period had passed since cardholders canceled their memberships. However, there are considerable risks of fraudulent usage What are the risks here, and why aren't they already present by someone generating credit card numbers with a RNG? AFAIK credit card transactions are authenticated by at least…

There's a risk. Have you ever had your credit card number expire? If a merchant has repeat billing, you don't even need to update with the new date and cvv. Code changes must now be made to make sure I don't end up responsible for someone's else bill because my card expired and someone issued the same card number with a different expiration date and cvv.

This is a simple issue to solve if you have all the issuers in line/on the same page.

Issuers simply need tabs on this. This means, a) they only allow this for merchants that have had previous transactions. b) They reset this when a card is reused (owner of the number changes).

Ultimately you just need a system that turns on stricter checks when reuse-induced issues are likely.

Once a card is reused the issuer simply needs to turn off the recurring billing laxness until the card gets close to expiration again, i.e. a few years, which should suffice to detect any sort of problematic patterns.

This wouldn't affect the customer at all as any legitimate transaction would have been made with up to date expiry and CVV.

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#158
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk about the power of inertia when attempting to change consumer behaviors. Also, we still haven't had an easy to use open tool set to make usage of Public Key Cryptography friendly to average Joes. No, GnuPG doesn't count - it's hard to use and cumbersome to configure it securely. You need to be a cryptographer or a mathematician to pick the right parameters in order to stay current and secure. Definitely not frie…

One thing we’ve been able to leverage with cryptocurrency is that the “wallets“ have standardized some public-private key cryptography. So some aspects of our products dont “need a blockchain for this” but the proliferation of standardized signing tools and size of the niche has made it extremely viable to cater to that market. PGP had 30 years to get anywhere , and all we have are some pretty bad, cumbersome busines…

[deleted]

Re: Japan facing credit card number shortage

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the PKI trust issue, at least with regard to financial transactions, could be solved with government involvement. Governments could sign, or issue, PKI keys when they issue identity documents and business licenses. There's much less room for impersonation fraud if the keys used by businesses and people to identify themselves electronically are tied to their foundational identity documents. Obviously,…

I think a government controlled PKI authority, especially one that required real identity authentication, would possibly be the solution that would make the least number of people happy.

without even broaching conspiracy theories or secret organizations it's not like government has a stellar track record of dealing with data it promises will be kept secret and single-purpose (for example SSNs).
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