Rakuten now accepts credit card payments and gives points

[Established]

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...

Your Rakuten Credit card name cannot be changed.

I called Rakuten Card, and they connected Rakuten Securities, and Rakuten Securities matched my Rakuten Card name.

You will need to ask SBI to match the name on your Rakuten Card.

...Also did you make 4-5 posts on the exact same topic?

[OwenM]

Just checked as it’s been a while. My securities and card names differ in that one is missing a hyphen, due to a character limit I presume. However, everything works correctly as Rakuten Securities have made sure to allow this name to be cleared.

I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t keep asking questions about this until you get the information you need. That is what this place is for, right?

[ToushiTime]

Just checked as it’s been a while. My securities and card names differ in that one is missing a hyphen, due to a character limit I presume. However, everything works correctly as Rakuten Securities have made sure to allow this name to be cleared.

I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t keep asking questions about this until you get the information you need. That is what this place is for, right?

Thanks Owen,
That's good to know that they can link your accounts despite the hyphen difference.
I will see if Rakuten Securities can link to Rakuten Card without having to adjust either name. If I have to adjust the Rakuten Securities name, I think I will lose the link with Rakuten Bank (MoneyBridge) which uses my full name to match my ID card.

[ToushiTime]

Hi it's been a while, but I think I will type up my experience in case it helps anyone else:

As others have noted, the easiest solution is to remove the middle name on Rakuten Securities to match Rakuten Card. However, I didn’t want to mess with the name on Rakuten Securities as that must match my full name on Rakuten Bank, which had to match the full name on my ID cards.

I ended up linking Rakuten Card and Rakuten Securities without deleting my middle name in the Rakuten Securities name. As expected, I could’t change the English name for Rakuten Card, which has no middle name. However, my Rakuten Card account now has a “furigana card meigi” * with a middle name.

Rakuten Securities did not remove the middle name on their account but they asked for my “furigana card meigi” for Rakuten Card, which now has my middle name. Rakuten Securities then linked my account to Rakuten Card and I am now set up to pay Tsumitate NISA by Rakuten Card. The MoneyBridge link between Rakuten Securities and Rakuten Bank continues to work.

* When I originally applied online for Rakuten Card, there was only enough space to put my English name without a middle name and I made the furigana match that. After I had applied online and before the card arrived, I read about people not receiving cards via 本人限定 post - not 簡易書留 post - because the name on the card envelope did not match the ID card shown to the delivery person. To avoid this, I preemptively called Rakuten Card about that and they sent me ID confirmation forms by post. I filled them in, adding my middle name. Rakuten Card sent me the card after that. The 会員氏名 on the document that came with the card is in English with no middle name. The card itself has my English name with no middle name. However, the katakana name, which is used on the envelope and my log-in page, has my middle name and is treated as my “furigana card meigi”, according to the operators of both Rakuten Card and Rakuten Securities.

I was also able to set up Rakuten Bank as the debit account for Rakuten Card.

[Matt_Black]

Joined the forum recently and have learnt some much already, thank you for sharing your experiences and gudiance.

This thread in particular helped me sort out the name mismatch quite quickly. The Rakuten Securities help desk assistant said that his team receive many name mismatch escalations and knew exactly how to fix it.

[ToushiTime]

Glad it worked out for you.
In the end, I found Rakuten far more helpful than SBI.