RetireJapan

Something I've been meaning to write about (to spur discussion) and something I feel doesn't have very good coverage in English are point ecosystems. Now you might ask yourself, what is a point ecosystem? Well, I'm gonna try to answer that.

What is a point ecosystem?

So, if you've been in Japan long enough you kind of get an idea about how points mad everyone is. Every store would have their own loyalty system and for the most part, Japanese companies are good about giving out points and also keeping to the basic concept of 1 point = 1 yen which when looking at loyalty programs overseas makes the Japanese system incredibly simplified.

Now, some companies decided to take this a step further and basically use the same brand of points for their various services. I'm sure you're seeing where I'm getting at here but the more you use the same company's services the more points you get. And Japan has conditioned its consumers to want points and so companies need to be generous in giving them out.

The most famous ecosystems in Japan right now are:
- Rakuten
- Paypay/Yahoo (Softbank)
- docomo
- au

There are other smaller ones like LINE or Amazon but they don't have enough yet to be considered major.

Now this post is going to be about Rakuten partly because its what I'm familiar with and partly because its the biggest and most famous one in Japan.


Rakuten offers ALOT of services and they have varying usefullness to getting points. I will discuss some of the major ones and ones that I recommend.

Rakuten Ichiba
This is the base Rakuten service and its where you can buy anything you want. The UI terrible but for the most part its competitive with Amazon with regards to price and availability. It also has the SPU program which gives you bonus points for using other Rakuten services. Basically every purchase from Ichiba would normally get you 1% back as points but depending on your SPU status, it can go ALL the way upto 16% (I find this very unrealistic though) plus if you time it with various promotions like Rakuten Card bonus day (+1% on days ending in 5 or 0), Rakuten sports teams winning (+1% each), Rakuten Super Sale (every month they run sales and every unique shop you make a 1000 JPY from will increase your points earnings for the month by 1% to a max of 10%), etc

Using Ichiba for Furusato Nozei during a super sale with max SPU is the ultimate goal.

Note that points earned through SPU are considered time limited and expire in 1 month.

Rakuten Card
While Rakuten Ichiba is considered the base of Rakuten, Rakuten card is arguably where the points system revolves around. This is a normal credit card (the base card has no annual fees) and you earn 1% of your monthly bill in points.

SPU condition: Regular cards get +2% points, Premium/Black gets +4% points

Rakuten Bank
Rakuten Bank is one of the big "net banks" Interest rates in Japan are really bad but Rakuten Bank actually has the best out of all the banks I've seen (it advertises being 100x more than megabanks and while that's true its 0.01%). There is something called a "Happy Program" and if you use Rakuten Bank as a primary (or even secondary) bank you can hit Advanced or Premium status easily which will give you a free 3-5 withdrawals and 3-5 transfers a month.

SPU condition: You need to setup your Rakuten Card to be paid through Rakuten Bank monthly. 1% SPU

Rakuten Securities
The last of the Rakuten financial trifecta and the one most people in RetireJapan have probably heard the most about. Aside from the low costs and plentiful investment options, it also has incredibly synergy with Rakuten Card and Rakuten Bank.

The ideal situation is: Rakuten Card linked to Rakuten Securities for 50,000 JPY monthly tsumitate (1% points) + Rakuten Bank linked to Rakuten Securities for money sweep (this is more for convenience plus the interest rate in Rakuten Bank goes up to 0.1%) + Rakuten Card linked to Rakuten Bank (SPU condition for Rakuten Bank)

SPU condition: You need to spend 1 point and buy a mutual fund worth at least 500 JPY. This gets you +1% SPU for the month.
This one is actually confusing because how they write it, you kinda assume they ask you to use 500 points but no, its 1 point but at least 500 yen.

Other SPU services:
Rakuten Mobile - 1% This is the lowest of the low cost carriers. If you live in a major city, go get it.
Rakuten Mobile Payment - 0.5% if you buy Google Pay credit using Rakuten Carrier Payment, you get this bump in SPU for the month.
Rakuten App - 0.5% purchasing anything on Ichiba using the app gets you an automatic SPU bump (highly recommended)
Rakuten Hikari - 1% Rakuten is now your internet provider
Rakuten Life - 1% if you pay your insurance through Rakuten Card. Also covers pet insurance and car insurance.
Rakuten Books - 0.5% Make any purchase from Rakuten Books (this is not just books, you can buy electronics and games here too)
Rakuten Kobo - 0.5% Make any purchase from Rakuten Kobo
Rakuten Travel - 1% Book anything through Rakuten Travel
Rakuten Beauty/Fashion/Pasha - 0.5%

Note that Rakuten makes changes to SPU alot so services will go in and out quite a bit (I suspect Hikari is not long for this world, for example)

Non-SPU services
Rakuten Energy - If you get both Electricity and Gas through Rakuten, the return is 1% of your bill PLUS the normal 1% from Rakuten card (highly recommended since this literally costs nothing to do)
Rakuten Pay/Edy - Rakuten has two contactless payment options. Loading Edy points or using Rakuten Pay gets you 0.5% from Rakuten Card and USING it gets you 0.5% for Edy and 1% for Rakuten Pay. If you're in a store that accepts the Rakuten point card (Family Mart, McDonald's etc) then you get an additional 1% giving you a max 2% for Edy and 2.5% for Rakuten Pay.


My opinion:
I think anyone who wants to dive into Rakuten needs Card, Bank and Securities at a minimum. Depending on the card type, that's already a minimum of +5.5% in the SPU. There are unrealistic ones like Travel (who books hotels once a month?) that I suggest not worrying about. If you get the bonus that month, great, but don't chase those services you weren't going to be using anyways.

Also, while its not sexy, the best recommendation for usage of Rakuten Points is to use it to pay off your credit card bill. The reason being that its the only place you won't earn points. Everything else, you could theoretically earn points on those purchases so its better not to use points on them (using points reduces your points earning for that purchase)

In conclusion, Japan has made it so that consolidating your usage of services to specific companies can be incredibly beneficial. If you're going to be using these services or buying these products anyway, it doesn't hurt to maximize your points earnings.

Fantastic post, thank you! Would you mind if I adapted it for the blog as a guest post?

I hate the idea of points programs and have never bothered with them, but maybe I should

RetireJapan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 9:38 am Fantastic post, thank you! Would you mind if I adapted it for the blog as a guest post?

I hate the idea of points programs and have never bothered with them, but maybe I should

Go right ahead. I think its important to get the word out so the more people who understand, the better.

A good rule for these things is that if you can do it with no extra effort from you, then why not, its free money. Where it gets dicey is if they lure you in to spend unncessary money (Books, Travel, Beauty etc are examples of this) I think you can easily get 60-80% of the way there with Rakuten with no additional cost other than startup effort.

I'll bite.

Fundamentally, point programs exist to make the company money.

All it takes is one or two purchases where you went with Rakuten instead of a competitor due to loyalty, and they can make back the full amount of points you were credited with.

Non-obvious costs to you: Mental burden of keeping track of the point system (+ risk of opportunity cost if you get obsessed...), constant marketing exposure, your point activity profiled and tracked by the company so they can and target you with offers / advertisements / use you for market analysis.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but just to be aware that these schemes exist for the benefit of the company, not the customer, and to keep in mind what they are getting out of it.

I don't think you need Bank or Securities to get started, but I agree with the Card. The 1% from the card is decent enough and competitive with other cards, seems to be the best reason to get involved with their ecosystem.

I'm not anti-Rakuten. I hate their marketing and their UI is terrible. But they do genuinely add uniqueness to the market in many areas. I use them myself and *checks notes*, got 5-figures of points in the last 12 months. But I also won't hesitate to use another service if it works out cheaper / more convenient / better in other ways.

adamu wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 11:00 am
I'm not anti-Rakuten. I hate their marketing and their UI is terrible. But they do genuinely add uniqueness to the market in many areas. I use them myself and *checks notes*, got 5-figures of points in the last 12 months. But I also won't hesitate to use another service if it works out cheaper / more convenient / better in other ways.

Rakuten card + Tsumitate (Nisa or Non Nisa) is a good deal. Outside of that, I am not sure.

I prefer Amazon, so I went with Amazon Gold, and the Free Rakuten card following them nerfing the Amazon Gold card.

Monex rejected me for their free card though...

Eh, we all get tracked by these companies one way or another. Rakuten is upfront about their business model revolving around Rakuten Super Points. I think Ichiba has godawful UI but their other stuff looks modern enough.

Basically, my stance is that if you're able to set yourself up to earn Rakuten Points, it doesn't hurt to do so. You lose nothing and you get free points. You get points from T-Points, Amazon, Paypay, dPoints anyways. Better to just merge them all into Rakuten if you can so you maximize your earnings.

Furusato Nozei using Rakuten basically gets you all of the tax discount for free + you more than make up the 2k administrative cost by earning Rakuten Points on them.

Good stuff.

On PayPay/Yahoo, perhaps add SoftBank to this as they are all in the SB 'group' and SoftBank users get additional points on Yahoo Shopping and this PayPay Mall thing.

I've dipped my toes in the other stuff like Yahoo and docomo but I always found them lacking or had services that made no sense to me. Although I've been hearing good things about Paypay now so maybe Softbank really is making a play for Rakuten's market. They're merging services with LINE too so its interesting how that will work.

Kanto wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:20 pm
I prefer Amazon, so I went with Amazon Gold, and the Free Rakuten card following them nerfing the Amazon Gold card.

Since last month, can set up SBI tsumitate since with the Amazon Mastercard.

Re Rakuten point ecosystem, I use the points we get to pay our CC - but taking part in the promotions and using Rakuten Ichiba feels like hard work to me.

zeroshiki wrote: ↑Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:19 am the best recommendation for usage of Rakuten Points is to use it to pay off your credit card bill. The reason being that its the only place you won't earn points. Everything else, you could theoretically earn points on those purchases so its better not to use points on them (using points reduces your points earning for that purchase)

T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶w̶a̶y̶s̶ ̶t̶r̶u̶e̶ (edit: see below)

For example, with Rakuten Energy, I get 5% points on the subtotal (before points are used), not on the final bill (after points are applied).

Personally my philosophy is to use them all as soon as possible, so I set up point payment on everything. Yes, it may miss out on a few points, but 1) that's better than the points expiring / becoming invalid /going unused and 2) The effort spent working out how to maximise the points is better spent elsewhere

edit: If you pay with Rakuten Card, then you also get 1% points on the full payment amount... so I guess there are a few extra points for *not* using points to pay. If you have time-limited points, waiting for the monthly card payment to use your points might be too long though? I'm getting too drawn into this...