Topic: Question about buying Wii Points from EU Wii Shop on Wii U

Hello all! I was recently reading the guide for importing a Wii and was struck by this line:

"For folk importing North American Wiis there's an additional consideration, since North America is the only region that requires address information from the account associated with the credit card used before a points purchase can be completed."

I'm in America and am thinking about importing a European Wii U. It seems difficult to find eShop cards from the EU region online, and finding Nintendo Points cards is even harder. My plan would be to purchase Nintendo Points with a credit card that I could use while the Wii U is in Wii Mode to buy VC games. This line from the guide seems to imply that I can use an American credit card to make these points purchases and that the system will not ask me for a billing address or block me for having a non-european credit card. Can anyone confirm this?? I was going to post on the original thread but it's quite old now and I figured it would be better to start a new one for my question.

So I wonder why it doesn't work the other way, then?? Can European tourists not use their credit cards here??

I'm not familiar with this issue but the quote in your original post suggests that NoA are choosing to additionally reinforce their region by ensuring that only US residents can purchase stuff on their online stores. It has nothing to do with how banks process payments - yes, Europeans can use cards in USA (I assume that was a rhetorical question) but stores don't ask for your address when you make a payment. Seems like an odd policy but there you go.

As the author of that article I can only report what I've seen first-hand. As regards to why, it seems to have to do with whatever the local regulations are regarding online credit card purchases. Nintendo Wii Shops seem to adhere to whatever the minimum requirement is: USA/Canada the dialogue will ask for an address and postcode in addition to the usual stuff and they need to be legit, though not tied to the card account; Brazil only prompts for a postcode after entering the card info.

Above all it appears that the card number must belong to a region where the Wii is sold; people from regions outwith, e.g., the Philippines, have reported being unable to use a card full-stop. Note this only relates to the Wii - I have no idea if the Wii U has additional restrictions or does an address lookup on the back-end or not because I have not (and don't intend to) imported a Wii U.

Thanks, all. That is very helpful. I'm hoping that the Wii Shop on Wii U functions the same as on the Wii, but I'll keep trying to confirm that before importing one.