Rakuten Ecosystem

[zeroshiki]

I’m a big proponent of the rakuten eco system.
I’m on with
Card
Bank
Securities (for Tsumitate NISA)
Gas
Electric
Phone (sim only)
Internet (hikari)
And of course use Ichiba.

The system is not perfect in terms of integration. There needs to be more linking together. 1 account with a bunch of services rather than loads of different accounts for different services. They should just link everything to the main rakuten account and then you should sign up to the various services through that account. Not have to link each service to each different account to get the benefits.

For example, I can’t link my credit card to my securities account because one of the accounts has my middle name and one of them doesn’t, but I can’t change them (at least not easily and seems like the easiest thing to do is make a new credit card. But that involves making a new credit card account by the looks of it!)

However the system is saving me a bunch of yennies from all the points I get whenever I pay any bills or go to McDonald’s or shop at Conan.

I called Rakuten Card and they sent me a form to add my middle name to my card (I signed up at the time when it wasn't important to do these kinds of things yet). This got the name corrected by Rakuten Card but I still had to make a couple more calls to Securities to make sure the name matches exactly (spaces will trip you up, Rakuten Card stores your name as one long thing. Lastname Firstname has a forced space so make sure there's no space between your firstname and middlename since Securities only accepts one space)

[Established]

I’m a big proponent of the rakuten eco system.
I’m on with
Card
Bank
Securities (for Tsumitate NISA)
Gas
Electric
Phone (sim only)
Internet (hikari)
And of course use Ichiba.

The system is not perfect in terms of integration. There needs to be more linking together. 1 account with a bunch of services rather than loads of different accounts for different services. They should just link everything to the main rakuten account and then you should sign up to the various services through that account. Not have to link each service to each different account to get the benefits.

For example, I can’t link my credit card to my securities account because one of the accounts has my middle name and one of them doesn’t, but I can’t change them (at least not easily and seems like the easiest thing to do is make a new credit card. But that involves making a new credit card account by the looks of it!)

However the system is saving me a bunch of yennies from all the points I get whenever I pay any bills or go to McDonald’s or shop at Conan.

Rakuten securities can change your name, to match the name on your credit card. (It does not work the other way around).

This has been mentioned on the board before.

[zeroshiki]

I think Securities can do it to a point. I don't know if they're willing to delete a middle name since that would cause your name to be different from your MyNumber card. Doesn't hurt to ask them I guess.

[Established]

I think Securities can do it to a point. I don't know if they're willing to delete a middle name since that would cause your name to be different from your MyNumber card. Doesn't hurt to ask them I guess.

They do not delete it, they join it to your first name and middle name

Simplified explanation: Essentially the Rakuten Securities database has the capacity to have your middle name separate. The Rakuten CC database does not.

So, the solution is for Rakuten Securities to merge your first and middle in their backend.

As mentioned in the forum, you may want to take advantage of the Rakuten English helpline to accomplish this if you are being stonewalled in Japanese.

It is 100% possible, it just requires persistence.

[seb]

Personally I use the points in Rakuten Securities.

Also, once I wanted to buy a ~20k computer screen. It took really grinding the Rakuten Marathon + eco-system SPU to actually match the Amazon price for the exact same item.

I wonder though, is Rakuten ethically better than Amazon? The way I see Amazon in Europe avoiding all taxes, and recently transformed deliveries into some Uber exploitation of drivers, I don't want to deal with them so much anymore. And I see the "independent" drivers in Japan too from Amazon. All this makes me want to pay more on Rakuten, but I don't know if Rakuten is doing the same actually. I just hope Rakuten doesn't turn into an exploitation machine as well for the employees.

Now, I need to find out how to use limited time points in Rakuten Energy instead of free coffees at Family Mart.

[zeroshiki]

Well, specifically for deliveries Rakuten doesn't really have their own so there's nothing to exploit. Other than the Rakuten specific stores (Books and 24), they're basically just an EBay for individual sellers. Those individual stores get "exposure" in exchange for Rakuten getting a cut.

I don't see Rakuten as any more evil/good than any random big company in Japan.

[KCLenny]

Personally I use the points in Rakuten Securities.

Also, once I wanted to buy a ~20k computer screen. It took really grinding the Rakuten Marathon + eco-system SPU to actually match the Amazon price for the exact same item.

I wonder though, is Rakuten ethically better than Amazon? The way I see Amazon in Europe avoiding all taxes, and recently transformed deliveries into some Uber exploitation of drivers, I don't want to deal with them so much anymore. And I see the "independent" drivers in Japan too from Amazon. All this makes me want to pay more on Rakuten, but I don't know if Rakuten is doing the same actually. I just hope Rakuten doesn't turn into an exploitation machine as well for the employees.

Now, I need to find out how to use limited time points in Rakuten Energy instead of free coffees at Family Mart.

What is the Marathon thing? I keep seeing it on the banners but never really understand what is it. Is it beneficial? How/why?

[zeroshiki]

What is the Marathon thing? I keep seeing it on the banners but never really understand what is it. Is it beneficial? How/why?

Rakuten runs its "super sales" once a month and the main thing is the marathon where the idea is for each unique store you make a 1000 JPY purchase on within the sale period, you get a bonus +1% point earning for all purchases you made (maximum 10%)

Its beneficial because you get more points but its also a trap to get you to buy more stuff. The smart grinder move is to make your furusato nozei purchases during the super sale so you get the +10% on your furusato nozei purchases.

[adamu]

Tried to turn on point payments for Rakuten Card, can't due to only being able to do that between the 12th and 24th of the month. Come back on August 12th.

It's August 12th, so thought I'd check this out.

It seems that there is no option to automatically use all your points (like you can for Energy, Mobile, etc.), you have to do the application manually every month.

It seems the most effective way would be to let points accrue for a few months, then when you have enough to notice / can be bothered, make the application on the 24th of the month. But I don't really like the idea of letting points accrue or having to do manual steps, so this might be a case of the few yen not being worth the effort.

[frodesky]

Here's a trick for Rakuten Pay:

- Charge Rakuten Cash using your Rakuten card for normal card points
- Change Rakuten Pay to use Rakuten Cash
- Get extra points when paying using Rakuten Pay

This will net you more than just setting your Rakuten Card as the default payment method in Rakuten Pay. You'll have to manually charge up your Rakuten Cash now and then however.

There's another trick I've seen mentioned for temporarily changing the ribo-barai setting and getting points during campaigns, but I couldn't quite figure out what the Japanese articles were saying, plus I didn't want to risk paying interest on the card if I screwed things up.