Bait and Switch.
Got so excited about Sony Bank, especially after reading this article:
https://japantoday.com/category/special ... s-in-Japan
The signup process was not so smooth for me. There is a signup app which in theory makes the process paperless, but you still have to fill out tedious paperwork in the end. I had to resend my application in twice, due to name and address issues.
Only after receiving the card and activating, did I discover that for iOS there are 2 apps: SonyBankWALLET and ソニー銀行. In short, SonyBankWALLET is basically for the Visa debit card, where you can monitor your transactions. ソニー銀行 is for monitoring account balance and trading currencies similar to Forex. The fact that there are 2 apps for what could have easily been in 1 app is annoying.
Both apps are 100% Japanese. No option to switch languages to English. After reviewing the website or marketing materials, I could not find any mention of the lack of English app support. Also, Sony's debit visa is NOT compatible with Apple Pay.
There is online chat support in English. There is no function to receive an emailed transcript of the chat, which is ubiquitous these days. So I have to copy the text into TextEdit and then export a PDF.
As Ben alluded to, there appears to be discrepancies on how a Western name is written. On my card, my name is written FirstnameMiddlename Lastname. So there is no space between my first and middle name. In all mail sent to me, my name is written in Katakana with the middle name omitted. My account suddenly stopped working with PayPay, and it seems like this is being caused by the middle name discrepancy. Sony Bank blames PayPay
I've tried reaching out to Ruth Marie Jarman, mentioned in the Japan Today article, with zero response. Probably a PR stunt and she's moved on to better projects.
