Visa announces Apple Pay support in Japan

Visa Apple Pay In Japan (Image credit: Visa)

What you need to know

Visa has announced support for Apple Pay in Japan.
People can make contactless payments via Apple Watch and iPhone.

Visa has today announced the arrival of support for Apple Pay in Japan. Both debit cards and credit cards are supported out the gate.

First spied by MacRumors, those with cards issued by Aplus, SMBC Finance Service, NTT DoCoMo, Credit Saison, JACCS, Mitsui Sumitomo Bank Card, and Rakuten should be able to add them to the Wallet app on their iPhone right now. From there, they can also be added to their Apple Watch as well.

It can be used at convenience stores and supermarkets in Japan that have the Visa touch payment support mark. Simply hold your iPhone or Apple Watch to complete payment quickly.

Apple Pay payments can be made on iPads as well, while Macs are also supported so long as there is an Apple Watch or iPhone within range to perform some sort of biometric authentication.

All recent iPhones and Apple Watches will provide that authentication, including the excellent – and best iPhone available today – iPhone 12.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.