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Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

news.bitcoin.com

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Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#61

Post by kalleboo »

Fuxy wrote: post #39
hkmurakami wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are attracted to using Bitcoin as a day to day currency and payments system, to reduce their dependence on mainstream banking. The "be your own bank" philosophy. Japan is, at least to my understanding, one of the last countries to develop such a mindset in the mainstream.

Don't count Japan out just yet they adopted NFC payment way before it even showed up on the radar of other countries. NFC communication for exchanging emails or making small payments was a thing before smart phones were popular so there's that. Japan is weird because in some situations their surprisingly stuck in their ways like with CD sale and in others their surprisingly advanced like the use of NFC.

I dunno about NFC adoption. Aside from train rides, most people here use cash for all their day-to-day transactions. Even though the option has been available for over a decade, it's rare to see someone pay in a store with NFC. Way rarer than e.g. in the UK or Australia.

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#62

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #22
a_bonobo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese culture is so hard to predict when it comes to tech uptake - you see an 80-year old man play with his Nintendo DS at the bus stop, Kyoto City is covered by free Wifi, Internet is fast and cheap, but the ATM closes down at 6pm and your hotel room advertises free fax (which you may actually end up needing)

Atm does not close anymore at 6pm. You are 10 years behind.

[deleted]

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#64

Post by kalleboo »

ekianjo wrote: post #22
a_bonobo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese culture is so hard to predict when it comes to tech uptake - you see an 80-year old man play with his Nintendo DS at the bus stop, Kyoto City is covered by free Wifi, Internet is fast and cheap, but the ATM closes down at 6pm and your hotel room advertises free fax (which you may actually end up needing)

Atm does not close anymore at 6pm. You are 10 years behind.

Yeah, they close at 9pm now

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#65

Post by kalleboo »

hkmurakami wrote: post #28
ekianjo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atm does not close anymore at 6pm. You are 10 years behind.

Do they still charge a modest (150 yen'ish) fee after hours? ;)

Depends on your bank. Traditional ones do. Lots of upstart banks (like Rakuten, Aeon) that don't.

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#66

Post by pjc50 »

corv wrote: post #59
dvcrn wrote: post #5

What is the advantage of this? Here in Japan every creditcard is giving you some kind of bonus program and encourages you to use that card for your bills so you automatically aggregate amazon / rakuten (japanese amazon competitor) / ANA / etc points. I mean, I guess I could exchange every month my yen into bitcoins and then pay with it, but why?

You might want to exchange for Bitcoin in order to preserve your purchasing power because the BoJ is printing Yen. You can't pay online with gold.

.. except that real stability of prices in Yen is pretty good, while Bitcoin is highly volatile. Admittedly this is often to the upside - since BTC/$ seems to drift upward over time - but it's definitely not a great inflation hedge.

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#67

Post by helthanatos »

kalleboo wrote: post #6

> The service is the first of its kind in Japan, where Bitcoin is still a novelty in daily consumer life. Where is Bitcoin not a novelty in daily consumer life?

Wasn't there an article a few weeks ago that said bitcoin was on its last legs? Did I imagine that or did that happen?

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#68

Post by kalleboo »

gergles wrote: post #57
andy_ppp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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

Re: Japanese Can Soon Pay Their Utility Bills with Bitcoin

#69

Post by kalleboo »

dennist wrote: post #42
adrianN wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.
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