Rakuten now accepts credit card payments and gives points

[allThatMoney]

Hello, I have a NISA at Rakuten Securities and have set up the monthly contribution of 50,000 yen with my credit card. This month they subtracted 50,000 yen from my card that will be invested in January. But does this mean it goes into my 2020 NISA automatically? I thought I'd have to apply/open a NISA account explicitly each year. So I guess opening it once was enough and I can already use my 2020 NISA right away from January?

[RetireJapan]

Generally it is fairly automatic. They probably sent you a notification a couple of months ago to inform them what kind of NISA you wanted next year (ordinary or tsumitate).

[eyeswideshut]

Just updating the thread to let everyone know that I managed finally to get Rakuten SEC to register my card to set monthly purchases of the Emaxis Slim All Country for my NISA. I had the same issue where they wouldn't let me do it as my names were different for my CC and my Rakuten SEC accounts. Turned out the furigana for my SEC account included my middle name which caused the issue. Anyway, once we finally figured out the issue they were quick to bypass it. Anyway, if you have the same problem you will have to call their customer support to have them sort it out. They were helpful but it was super painful repeatedly trying to spell my very long and annoyingly foreign name in both romaji and katakana over the phone.

Anyway, thought I would let people know that it is possible to fix.

[ivanpgs]

I am also here to say that I managed to link my Rakuten Securities account with the Rakuten credit card to pay monthly for the Tsumitate NISA (that I also moved from SBI to Rakuten after 2 years).

I will share with you my case. I come from Spain and have one name and two surnames (coming from father and mother). Let's introduce me as:

Name: IVAN
Surnames: MOMO TARO

In my Rakuten credit card is shown:

Code: Select all

Romaji: MOMO TARO IVAN
Kana: モモタロ　イヴァン

In my Rakuten Securities account is stored as:

Code: Select all

Romaji: MOMO IVAN (they do not have enough space to accommodate both surnames)
Kana: モモ　タロ　イヴァン

I had to make two calls (actually three, but to 2 different places)...

- One was to Rakuten Securities. Using their phone number: 03-6739-3333 and then using the option 4. Then you will be asked for three things:

- First: 部店 - buten, which is a 3 digit number
- Second: お客様コード - okyakysama ko-do, six digit account that is actually your account number
- Third: IDコード, which are the 4 digits in the given ID (username) that you are using to connect to your Rakuten Securities account online

In Rakuten Securities they told me that most probably the problem would be that the KANA (not romaji) stored in both systems differed. But I could not know what was the kana stored in Rakuten credit card, even though I tried hard to navigate through their e-NAVI internet system.

- Then I call the second company, Rakuten Card. I used the phone number 0570-6669-10 (I also was given a second one, but not used it: 090-474-6287). The also asked for some private information such as my birth date, full name, etc. They told me that indeed, the KANA were different. In the end, the problem is that in Rakuten Securities they were using 2 spaces and in the Rakuten Credit Card only one:

Rakuten Securities Kana:
モモ　タロ　イヴァン
Rakuten credit card Kana:
モモタロ　イヴァン

Unfortunately, Rakuten Credit card agents are not able to put other space different than the one to differentiate the name from the surnames, so what I did instead is having an agent from Rakuten Securities to remove the extra space, so both would not differ anymore. They took some time to do it and called me back, and told me it was done but I needed to wait one day to test it, and that was it, it worked!!

They also warned me that when my credit card expires and I need to link a new credit card, I would need to do the procedure again. I do not know the reason, they did not even know how to explain me, but who cares, I got it done.

So yes, it's possible, it is not painful (time-wise only take sometime to make the phone calls and they do the change pretty fast, plus you do not need to send them extra documents). They "only drawback" is that you will need to speak fairly good Japanese to make yourself understood by them and understand what they are saying, or have another person that can speak Japanese helping you through this process. But well, it's Japan, fair enough to speak their official language.

For all of you that are in the process to do it good luck, it's not that difficult in the end

[Kanto]

I am also here to say that I managed to link my Rakuten Securities account with the Rakuten credit card to pay monthly for the Tsumitate NISA (that I also moved from SBI to Rakuten after 2 years).

I will share with you my case. I come from Spain and have one name and two surnames (coming from father and mother). Let's introduce me as:

Name: IVAN
Surnames: MOMO TARO

In my Rakuten credit card is shown:

Code: Select all

Romaji: MOMO TARO IVAN
Kana: モモタロ　イヴァン

In my Rakuten Securities account is stored as:

Code: Select all

Romaji: MOMO IVAN (they do not have enough space to accommodate both surnames)
Kana: モモ　タロ　イヴァン

I had to make two calls (actually three, but to 2 different places)...

- One was to Rakuten Securities. Using their phone number: 03-6739-3333 and then using the option 4. Then you will be asked for three things:

- First: 部店 - buten, which is a 3 digit number
- Second: お客様コード - okyakysama ko-do, six digit account that is actually your account number
- Third: IDコード, which are the 4 digits in the given ID (username) that you are using to connect to your Rakuten Securities account online

In Rakuten Securities they told me that most probably the problem would be that the KANA (not romaji) stored in both systems differed. But I could not know what was the kana stored in Rakuten credit card, even though I tried hard to navigate through their e-NAVI internet system.

- Then I call the second company, Rakuten Card. I used the phone number 0570-6669-10 (I also was given a second one, but not used it: 090-474-6287). The also asked for some private information such as my birth date, full name, etc. They told me that indeed, the KANA were different. In the end, the problem is that in Rakuten Securities they were using 2 spaces and in the Rakuten Credit Card only one:

Rakuten Securities Kana:
モモ　タロ　イヴァン
Rakuten credit card Kana:
モモタロ　イヴァン

Unfortunately, Rakuten Credit card agents are not able to put other space different than the one to differentiate the name from the surnames, so what I did instead is having an agent from Rakuten Securities to remove the extra space, so both would not differ anymore. They took some time to do it and called me back, and told me it was done but I needed to wait one day to test it, and that was it, it worked!!

They also warned me that when my credit card expires and I need to link a new credit card, I would need to do the procedure again. I do not know the reason, they did not even know how to explain me, but who cares, I got it done.

So yes, it's possible, it is not painful (time-wise only take sometime to make the phone calls and they do the change pretty fast, plus you do not need to send them extra documents). They "only drawback" is that you will need to speak fairly good Japanese to make yourself understood by them and understand what they are saying, or have another person that can speak Japanese helping you through this process. But well, it's Japan, fair enough to speak their official language.

For all of you that are in the process to do it good luck, it's not that difficult in the end

Thank you for the guide. My Rakuten securities account features the first 3 letters of my First and Last name. That is my "name" according to their system. I assume it is only designed for Kanji characters. It took a few phone calls and lots of emails and uploads to get to that point. Now finally my NISA and iDeco are setup.

It, therefore, refuses to accept my credit card. (Western first and last name) is related to my Rakuten securities "name".

I honestly don't know if I have the energy to go back down that path just for some points....

Aren't the supposed to be an English/Japanese operating company?

[seb]

I actually tried to get either my credit card or securities name changed (just 1 space difference).

Credit card: our system does not support spaces in the Katakana name. This is a technical issue where their system simply erases all spaces before saving to database, afaik.

Securities: "but your real name has a space right?". After 2-3 calls I finally got them to say, "okay, we'll remove that space, it should work tomorrow". The space never disappeared and I never could link the credit card to my securities account. I'm just leaving it now.

[Kanto]

I actually tried to get either my credit card or securities name changed (just 1 space difference).

Credit card: our system does not support spaces in the Katakana name. This is a technical issue where their system simply erases all spaces before saving to database, afaik.

Securities: "but your real name has a space right?". After 2-3 calls I finally got them to say, "okay, we'll remove that space, it should work tomorrow". The space never disappeared and I never could link the credit card to my securities account. I'm just leaving it now.

I did manage to get my Rakuten Points to work w/ Rakuten Securities by jamming my last and middle name together in the form field. So that was a win!

[seb]

My Rakuten Points work all right. I can get +1% on Rakuten Marketplace by investing and I can invest my points on the stock market. Only the credit card can't be linked, so I am missing on those 500 points.

[OwenM]

Hey Seb,

All I can say is keep at them. Don’t give in, you’ll get the right person in the the end. I have an family name with two words. So of course the spacing has been issue. My gaijin card and social insurance card have different spacings, never mind the numerous katakana versions floating around. Anyway, I badgered the Rakuten people until they accepted my situation and now I’m able to receive points for mutual fund investments on the credit card. Basically the clearing house for transactions is set to accept one version of my name from Rakuten and a different one from SBI. As long as you are properly identified they can pretty much do anything when they either know how or can be bothered.

[ToushiTime]

Hey Seb,

All I can say is keep at them. Don’t give in, you’ll get the right person in the the end. I have an family name with two words. So of course the spacing has been issue. My gaijin card and social insurance card have different spacings, never mind the numerous katakana versions floating around. Anyway, I badgered the Rakuten people until they accepted my situation and now I’m able to receive points for mutual fund investments on the credit card. Basically the clearing house for transactions is set to accept one version of my name from Rakuten and a different one from SBI. As long as you are properly identified they can pretty much do anything when they either know how or can be bothered.

Hi Owen,
In the end, how did your Rakuten Card name and Rakuten Securities name differ? Was it just a matter of different spacing, or was part of your name truncated? Or are you using Rakuten Card to invest via SBI Securities? - you mentioned SBI...