Which Rakuten Card?

[zeroshiki]

Setting up the card to do Tsumitate takes the same amount of time as setting up money sweep and doing bank transfer Tsumitate.

I think it takes quite a lot more time. You have the added confusion of the card payment setting cut off date, and you have to deal with fixing it if the card details change. You also have fewer options to use points and bonus payments when paying by card.

Why would the card cutoff date be an issue with difficulty to set up? You do it once and it repeats monthly. Do you change your credit card number all the time? The expiry date changing doesn't require you to set it up again unless you're doing something wrong. You can't do bonus payments with CC but the vast majority of use cases of Tsumitate is literally Tsumitate and not maxing it out using bonus.

Setting up the card to do Tsumitate takes the same amount of time as setting up money sweep and doing bank transfer Tsumitate. I recommend anything that's set and forget and having it be part of your CC bill is quite attractive versus making sure your Rakuten Bank account is filled up every month.

Unless you have a middle name ...

Ok this one is fair. I don't remember if its the same with bank transfer but having a common name (or way of writing your name) for all your accounts is a good best practice if you are able to do it.

[Tsumitate Wrestler]

Setting up the card to do Tsumitate takes the same amount of time as setting up money sweep and doing bank transfer Tsumitate. I recommend anything that's set and forget and having it be part of your CC bill is quite attractive versus making sure your Rakuten Bank account is filled up every month.
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Ok this one is fair. I don't remember if its the same with bank transfer but having a common name (or way of writing your name) for all your accounts is a good best practice if you are able to do it.

This is not something you can avoid necessarily. Securities companies usually are (First Middle Last) and credit cards are (First Last).

For both Rakuten and SBI, my card connection needed to be approved manually. SBI did it in 24 hours, their internal messaging service is great.

[adamu]

Why would the card cutoff date be an issue with difficulty to set up? You do it once and it repeats monthly.

The investment date is usually the following month, so you can end up missing out on the first month if you miss the cutoff date. You need to spend the time to understand it and make sure you don't get it wrong.

Do you change your credit card number all the time? The expiry date changing doesn't require you to set it up again unless you're doing something wrong.

This can happen for example if the number is changed for fraud protection, or if you upgrade/downgrade the card and the number changes. Again, you could miss a payment when this happens and have to spend time to fix it.

I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying it's extra hassle, and might not be worth it for a sake of a few thousand points a year, especially if it makes you miss a payment.

[TJKansai]

I've got the Premium, mainly for Priority Pass.
Not sure if I will keep it in 2025 since I may not get more than 3-4 chances to use the lounge access. They are also increasing the guest fee from ¥3,300 to $35 (¥5,000?), which is definitely not worth it.


「プライオリティ・パス」の会員証は、2025年1月より、「プライオリティ・パス メンバーズシップカード」から「デジタル会員証（プライオリティ・パス アプリ）」に変更となります。また、楽天プレミアムカードの会員様は2025年1月以降、無料でご利用いただける回数が年間5回までに変更となり、6回目以降のご利用料金は1回あたりUS35$となります。楽天ブラックカードの会員様は、引き続き回数の制限なく無料でご利用いただけます。ご同伴者様のご利用料金は楽天プレミアムカードが1名様につきUS35$、楽天ブラックカードが1回のご利用につき2名様まで無料、3名様以降は1名様につきUS35$となります。


I did use the baggage delivery twice. It was very helpful on our outbound from Narita. On the inbound to KIX it didn't make much difference.