Japan is mostly cash-based for face-to-face transactions.

Online, users are extremely comfortable paying electronically. You have to remember that paying via mobile was a thing here several years before the rest of the world, so people have had longer to acclimatize.

As a reference point, Japan spent around $8B via mobile phones in 2006 (i.e. before the iphone launched).

Best i recall a large part about this was that the carriers had their own banks that could issue credit cards that was linked to the phone.

They may well have done for legal reasons, but the point for consumers was that you could find a product in a web page and hit purchase, and the cost would just show up as a line item in your phone bill, without any signups or credit card numbers.

Similar deal with NFC payments. They launched here in 2004, and were fairly widespread by the time smartphones arrived. It used to be very common for people to move "up" to a smartphone and then be surprised to find out how many features they'd given up.

Don't they also have a system similar to the French "net pay" (or whatever the name) where you can pay and have it billed on your next carrier bill? Here even Google play supports it, and while not the major payment system it does remove all friction from online payment.

I'd probably agree with that assessment, but I'd also agree that Japanese consumers will charge over $50 billion in online CC payments this year. "Third largest economy in the world" is all sorts of interesting.

I don't even have a credit card (I live in Japan). Stuff I buy online I pay at the convenience store or on delivery in cash, everything else I pay in cash or using my commuter pass (RFID).

You may live like this but this is uncommon. They are issuing cards very aggressively recently. Most of my friends have a credit card and they use it often.

Cash-based for consumer payments (especially in the countryside). Business-level payments and cities have much more extensive credit card support, and it's only continuing to become a more common payment method.

Yes it's mostly cash and there are many places (like restaurants) where they ONLY accept cash, too. So you always need to have some cash on you.

I am afraid that isn't true. At least not in big cities. Almost all shops and chain restaurants accept all suite of cards. Credit ones, prepaid, debit ones rarely because they don't issue them often. People are changing.

Most of it here is cards(credit and preload), my wife and her family very rarely use cash.

On the other hand I prefer to, difficult to find d out what's wrong when the stop workers speak Japanese and I don't haha

Interestingly, I've noticed Square is quite popular here now. On my last visit it was much more difficult to pay for food with credit cards.