Rakuten Card Investment -> Huge Point Reduction

[ToushiTime]

To be pedantic, the actual breakdown is:

0.5% from Rakuten Card for charging Rakuten Cash
1.0% from Rakuten Pay for using Rakuten Cash
0.5% from Rakuten point card at Family Mart.

So you're getting a total of 2% points - 0.5% of which comes from the point card. Here are the places you can use the point card:
https://pointcard.rakuten.co.jp/partner/

Thank you for the correction.
Yes, FamilyMart only lets you collect 1 point per 200 yen with Rakuten Point Card.
So, the grand total for FamilyMart is 2 points, not 2.5 points, per 100 yen spent
Some places such as Daimaru and Matsuzakaya give you 1 point per 100 yen with Rakuten Point Card.
https://pointcard.rakuten.co.jp/partner/ clicking on the logos shows the points

[Viralriver]

Rakuten just nerfed their SPU for 楽天証券 as well, starting in April. Up till now if you bought 500 yen of securities with at least a partial point payment you'd get +1x SPU, now it will be +0.5x SPU and only on 30,000 JPY+ per month.

Also, if you use Rakuten Insurance you'll lose the SPU completely.

I've moved over to Rakuten completely, but I'm now considering going back on that decision. So much is getting nerfed it's insane.

EDIT: Took a look at the text more closely, I think you can get +1x for 証券 if you were to spend 30k on 投資信託 and another 30k on US stocks (payment in yen). Either way, the bar went from 500 JPY -> 60,000 JPY, a 120x increase. For those of you with just a tsumitate NISA this will suck.

[Haystack]

Screen Shot 2022-02-04 at 16.08.58.png

Rakuten just nerfed their SPU for 楽天証券 as well,

[adamu]

now it will be +0.5x SPU and only on 30,000 JPY+ per month.

*and* you need to link it to a Rakuten Bank account. Looks like the party's over

[zeroshiki]

On the plus side, they're now literally begging you to apply to Rakuten Mobile from the Rakuten Cart Page

[zeroshiki]

I tried signing up for a Monex card but my name is longer than the 10 characters they allow for the furigana part. Curses, foiled again.

[adamu]

Basically you can invest 50k in Rakuten Cash per month completely separate from the CC Tsumitate so they've effectively made it 100k a month for the CC except that you have to invest using Rakuten's funny money that's not tpoints. Buying Rakuten Cash using your CC gets you 0.5% points (and then Securities gives a temporary boost of 0.5% during the initial period making it total 1% points)

It is a shame that Rakuten are making this 1% -> 0.2% cut.

But there's one more positive side to having another 50k/month (up to 100k/month total) you can funnel through the CC. It is a point that is not mentioned much, but there is an opportunity benefit to investing via credit cards. In Rakuten's case you receive the investment at the start of the month (usually 2nd or 3rd), but only have to pay for it via the CC bill at the end of the month (27th). So it helps cash flow, and means effectively you can gain an extra month of investing. For an investment product with say 6% average yearly growth, this is a ~0.5% benefit.

So even after the new Rakuten Cash promotion ends and that part drops to 0.5%, anyone who would be investing 100k/month+ anyway and manages their cash flow diligently could be slightly better off from this change* in the long run. Or at least until Rakuten next change the rules.

* before was 1% points + 0.5% opportunity benefit for 50k/month, which is 750 yen/month
after is 0.2% from CC 50k/month, 0.5% from Rakuten Cash 50k/month, + 0.5% opportunity benefit on 100k/month, total 850 yen/month

Assuming you are going to be investing on Rakuten anyway and you have 100k/mo to invest, it seems the prudent* thing to do for the time being is:

1. Set up the Rakuten Cash dance in June to take advantage of the 1% points (¥500/mo), at least until the end of the year.
2. Keep the 50k/mo card payments, reducing to 0.2% (¥100/mo) points from September.

If you were investing 50k/mo via card and don't plan to increase it, then switching to the Rakuten Cash scheme (1% until the end of the year) seems to make sense.

It's quite a clever campaign. Once the 0.5% Rakuten Securities campaign expires, they'll have a whole bunch of people charging Rakuten Cash for ¥50,000 yen a month who were not previously doing that.

*working on the assumption that selling your free time to Rakuten for a few thousand yen is prudent...

[TBS]

Assuming you are going to be investing on Rakuten anyway and you have 100k/mo to invest, it seems the prudent* thing to do for the time being is:

1. Set up the Rakuten Cash dance in June to take advantage of the 1% points (¥500/mo), at least until the end of the year.
2. Keep the 50k/mo card payments, reducing to 0.2% (¥100/mo) points from September.

If you were investing 50k/mo via card and don't plan to increase it, then switching to the Rakuten Cash scheme for now, and be mentally prepared to either switch back or lose benefits. I can't imagine they are going to keep both schemes running in parallel for long (if they are going to permit it at all).

*working on the assumption that selling your free time to Rakuten for a few thousand yen is prudent...

Yeap, exactly. Even after the Cash route drops down to 0.5％ at the end of the year it will still be higher than the Card route, so anyone investing 50k/month wouldn't need to switch back under the current rules.

And also yes, we probably spend more time bagging Rakuten points than it really worth

[RetireJapan]

Well, I'm annoyed. I went to all the trouble of getting a Rakuten card just to take advantage of this points for purchase thing.

Validates my 'I am not interested in your points card/scheme/program. The meagre rewards are not worth the mental bandwidth' usual policy, which I foolishly deviated from this time...

[TBS]

Well, I'm annoyed. I went to all the trouble of getting a Rakuten card just to take advantage of this points for purchase thing.

Validates my 'I am not interested in your points card/scheme/program. The meagre rewards are not worth the mental bandwidth' usual policy, which I foolishly deviated from this time...

You still need the Card to get the points via the new Cash route, so it wasn't in vain. All it will require is a 5 minute settings change to setup the new Cash route when it becomes available on 楽天証券's site.

Unfortunately Rakuten's business model is to disappoint you. They openly state they use the points schemes as a way to attract business for new services. Once that business has come, they inevitably nerf and moving on to the next thing.