Best banks in Japan

[Sybil]

Sorry if I sounded rude when I said "Japan is behind" in regards to interest rates. It's obviously something more complicated than I'm able to understand, I just thought it was the case as Japan (generally speaking) just seems to be catching up to the rest of the world for things such as online banking, account apps, moving away from cashbook system, free ATMs, 24-hr ATMs, etc. (Among other things not related to banking, such as phone carriers, but I digress).

Interest rates are effectively 0 for cash deposits. Add inflation, and your cash savings lose money (i.e. it costs money to keep it in cash).
...
Because you can't get interest for cash deposits, the interest rate shouldn't be a deciding factor when you chose a bank account.

I wasn't talking about deposits, but rather yearly interest given. As far as I'm aware the yearly inflation rate is somewhere around 0.2% (though conservatively could be as high as 0.4% (Source:https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/inflation-cpi) and I'd rather have an account which gave me interest and then some (if possible) to avoid losing money via inflation by keeping it safe in the account, if that makes sense.

Japanese companies reflect what the market wants. Like companies in any other country reflect what the people using their services want. Do you really think most Japanese people would prefer a ‘banking app’ to the very useful ‘cashbook system’?

As for ‘free ATMs’ I haven’t paid to withdraw money out of a Japanese ATM in 15 years.

[TokyoWart]

I don’t mean any disrespect and of course think Japan is still a great place to live, but it has long been behind in meeting consumer financial needs. It was slow to adopt credit cards and then allowed JCB to monopolize credit markets in a way which both prevented people in Japan from more efficient foreign competitors like Visa and Mastercard and made it difficult for Japanese traveling overseas who couldn’t use their JCB cards or access foreign atm’s with Japanese bank cards. Atms in Japan still don’t have good 24 hour access (because of rules designed to help smaller banks) and I can remember when the New Year and Golden Week holidays could mean a long inability to get cash. Most of you should have seen how it can take weeks and sometimes months to set up financial or retirement accounts. Don’t even get me started on the ridiculous transaction fees for stock trades here compared to the movement toward zero commissions in the US. This link further remarks on why Japan is currently lagging in fintech https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/www.tran ... world/amp/

That’s not to say the country is lost forever or can’t change, but the continuing relative inefficiency of financial markets and retail banking here generally help established banks at the expense of consumers.

[Ryuuku]

Do you really think most Japanese people would prefer a ‘banking app’ to the very useful ‘cashbook system’?

As for ‘free ATMs’ I haven’t paid to withdraw money out of a Japanese ATM in 15 years.

An app which can allow you to see your current balance, past transactions since you opened your account, can be used to send money instead of doing so at a bank/atm among other things.
Or a bankbook which can only allow you to see past transactions to a certain point as however many pages you have, which must be regularly updated at an ATM or Bank and can do literally nothing else.
I know which one I would prefer. I had those online banking features for my simple halifax debit account way back in 2004 (or something around there, I forget specifically).

And as for the free ATMs, I live out in the countryside where there aren't many ATMs and the ones that are available are "they're free between certain hours for certain banks" and almost all have a bank transfer fee if I want to send money to another account, even at the same bank but especially so if the recipient has another bank. And I have to echo Tokyowart's comment about the goldenweek financial blackout. Luckily it's not so bad now, but that's a very recent development for something which shouldn't have been an issue in the first place. I just have to vent a comment; why the hell do ATMs have working hours? It's a machine that runs through the system, it doesn't need people to operate it. Just let the ATM and systems run 24/7/365.

[adamu]

I wasn't talking about deposits, but rather yearly interest given. As far as I'm aware the yearly inflation rate is somewhere around 0.2% (though conservatively could be as high as 0.4% (Source:https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/inflation-cpi) and I'd rather have an account which gave me interest and then some (if possible) to avoid losing money via inflation by keeping it safe in the account, if that makes sense.

Interest is only given on deposits, so I'm not sure what you mean.

Interest is so low (in the hundredths of a percent) as to be negligible. No bank will pay you at-or-above-inflation interest. What I'm saying is that you can't earn money on your money with a Japanese bank, so don't use the interest rate as a criteria when choosing an account.

[Ryuuku]

I must be misunderstanding you (very likely, I'm a financial moron) but by "interests on deposits" do you mean that in the sense of "you get interest on what you deposit per year" or "you get interest on your bank account balance, accrued".
As in,
A) If I deposit 100,000 in a year, I get interest on that 100,000
or
B) If I deposit 100,000 in a year and I then have a total of 500,000 in the bank from the previous year, I get interest on the 500,000

[adamu]

B) Interest on the total balance.

By deposits I mean, money in the bank as opposed to cash in hand, or money invested.

But you will get something like 0.001%. So 500,000 after a year will get you interest of 5 yen. If you lock it away for a period of time, maybe you'll get 0.01%, or 50 yen. I you lock away a larger amount, let's say 3M yen, that's 300 yen after a year. It's just not worth thinking about.

[Ryuuku]

Sorry to go round in circles, but that goes back to my original point that I've found several banks with APY of 0.2% (あおぞら銀行), far above the 0.0001% you used as an example, but much lower than foreign banks which have accounts above 1.5%, even a full 2%.
Though I think I understand- Japan just doesn't have savings accounts with high interest rates for customers, for whatever reason. It sucks, but at least my question is answered. Thanks.

[adamu]

That is the best rate available right now, although it's 0.159% after tax.

However, they charge you to do bank transfers (you get one free a month if you use their debit card regularly, or 2 free if you keep 5 million yen deposited). You're also restricted to post bank ATMs which have operating hours.

If you do multiple bank transfers a month, not satisfying the free transfer requirements will cause fees to be greater than the interest you receive.

For me, I do more than one transfer a month and don't want to keep 5M in the account, so despite their leading (still low) interest rate, it's not a good option for me.

[MBK]

Without starting new topic, let me ask if anything changed in regards to the best banks in Japan.

I recently started to reorganize my finances, started iDeco and NISA through Rakuten and while setting up things came across "Money Bridge" which if utilized seems to promise a 0.1 interest rate in Rakuten Bank.

I`m actually in the midst of moving my savings and investing them, though with the part which I plan on keeping in bank, I would like to at least utilize a bank account which offers the highest rate or benefits. When it comes to interest rates is there anything comparable with Rakuten Bank and its Money Bridge?

[zeroshiki]

Without starting new topic, let me ask if anything changed in regards to the best banks in Japan.

I recently started to reorganize my finances, started iDeco and NISA through Rakuten and while setting up things came across "Money Bridge" which if utilized seems to promise a 0.1 interest rate in Rakuten Bank.

I`m actually in the midst of moving my savings and investing them, though with the part which I plan on keeping in bank, I would like to at least utilize a bank account which offers the highest rate or benefits. When it comes to interest rates is there anything comparable with Rakuten Bank and its Money Bridge?

Moneybridge is a Rakuten-only thing so nothing there but if you care about interest rates (its super low either way) then Aozora has 0.11% apparently.
https://diamond.jp/zai/articles/-/50924

Also, note that Rakuten extends 0.1% interest only to the first 3M savings. Anything after that becomes 0.04%