If anyone else has had the displeasure of having to use these useless pieces of junk, I’d be very grateful if you could advise which stores they actually work? Thanks in advance.
Using them to purchase things successfully online is hit and miss at best, but using them in store is literally about a 1 in 3 chance that it works on the card teminal…After swiping the magnetic stripe on the card every direction on the card terminal and changing the way the card is facing too, I’ve painstakingly (and somewhat embarassingly) eventually been able to use it ‘successfully’ at My Basket, Family Mart, 7-11 and Loft. Pretty much every other store I’ve been to it doesn’t work though e.g: Daiso, Pronto, Starbucks, Lawson, Doutor etc.
Incase anyone reading is wondering why I’m using it in the first place, I bought the card to make some online purchases. However, having been declined at all the online stores in which I wanted to make purchases, I’m now stuck with a card with a load of money on, hence why I’m now trying to make atleast some use of the card by using it in store, albeit unsuccessfully…So I’m now stuck with a card that I can barely access my money with….Also, having been rejected from pretty much every ‘foreigner friendly’ debit card provider in Japan, it looks like Visa Vanilla is unfortunately basically my only option to make online purchases from online venors outside Japan…(unless there are any other more reliable prepaid cards?) Will try my luck at applying for the JP Bank debit card now I’ve been here 6 months, not feeling too hopeful it will be successful.
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never used vanilla so can’t say what it’s good for, but dcard prepaid works everywhere i tried it (including Costco), can be loaded with cash at Lawson (in person) or at 7/11 (at the ATM), accrues cash back d points at 0.5%, works in apple pay, and also can be used as iD cashless payment card. it does not work for paying *some* phone bills (works with rocket mobile for example), and doesn’t work at Costco gas station, but that’s okay for me.
it can also be loaded with another cc, so maybe you can offload your vanilla balance into it.
The yolo japan card has always been reliable for me. They pretty much just need your name and address as it’s a prepaid card that you buy for 500 yen (if you need the physical card).
Then you can load it monthly for free up to a few man en a month. If you want to put more than that on in a month it costs a fee
It works as a Visa card so it should be working most places. Did you follow the instructions to activate it properly to use it? If you’ve been here for 6 months just apply for somewhere like Sony Bank and don’t worry about Japan Post. You’ll get a multi-currency tap to pay debit card as default, apply online only, and all support in English. JP can just reject you because they feel like it. Since you can’t withdraw the funds on the vanilla card I’d just blow it all on Amazon for shit you want or need tbh if you’re feeling stuck.
I have used it to send money over PayPal, so you could make a second account and send it to your main PayPal account.
I gave a gift card I gave my kid that didn’t work very well so I mostly used it at the self-pay supermarket station. Less embarrassing at least.
For online shopping, Yahoo shopping (or mall?) works with PayPay, which you can fill with cash at the combini. You can’t get everything there, doesn’t solve the plane tickets problem if that’s the kind of online purchase you mean, but it’s been a good replacement for amazon and Rakuten, and the points add up nicely.(edit – sorry, realized you are trying to make online purchases outside Japan so this is no help at all. Good luck.)
Just use paypal for online purchases
I had the displeasure of giving one of these to my daughter to buy something or other. It ended up just sitting in a wallet because we couldn’t find anywhere that would take it. Eventually, I discovered that Amazon Japan accepts Vanilla Visa gift cards. I added it as a payment method and successfully used it. Unless they’ve changed things, it should still work.
Did you activate it for online purchases? You need to activate it separately if you want to use it online…
Other than that you can use it pretty much anywhere visa is accepted so im not sure why youre having problems. I used to use it all the time for about 3 uears when i only had an atm card and no debit/credit card and disnt have that many problems with it.
Where outside Japan are the vendors located? The list of “stores where the card can not be used” on the Vanilla Visa [site](https://www.vvgift.jp/user/info/007) says there’s some kind of restriction on using the card at EU-based stores due to EU anti-money-laundering restrictions (because the Vanilla card doesn’t require a name to be registered to it).
Personally I’d try applying for Kyash or WebMoney or one of those reloadable prepaid cards that only requires a mobile phone number and delivery address for the card. Those are reloadable with cash at conbinis (Kyash at 7-Eleven’s ATMs, WebMoney at Lawson).
I have used vanilla visa card many times (over 100k yen and 50 times) and I never had rejected on where magnetic stripe accepted. It’s sometimes rejected on internet but it’s normal as a card that doesn’t have 3D secure and the name is “GIFTCARD HOLDER”.
Yes, but how do they taste…