Japan's Switch eShop Will Soon No Longer Accept Overseas Payment Methods

Well, at least we can still use 12 digits eshop voucher code to buy eshop games.

actually it didn't work with my paypal before since it was already connected to my european...

anyway.. eshops vouchers work wel

Well this sucks.

Why does this country continue to go backwards?

I was only ever able to use eShop point cards I bought from Play-Asia when I wanted to add funds to my JP account, so I guess this doesn't really change anything about how I go about buying from the JP eShop. But it is a bit upsetting to see that they are tightening their stance on accessing regional eShops, because one of my favourite things about the Switch compared to Wii U and 3DS was the fact that we are able to visit other region eShops in the first place. Hopefully this isn't a sign that the Switch 2 situation will be more restricted.

@Uncle_Franklin Because they’re advertising the gimmick of the next Mario Kart.

@Bobb fraudulent, as in people pretending like they live in the region to receive better pricing in games, etc.

A very loose early morning guess is that S2 may be region locked and also may be launching ....in March? hmm.

Maybe they should stop releasing so many games for Japan only!

Been wrestling with picking up the Switch version of Super Robot Wars 30. If it'll become impossible to buy the DLC (eg : if they eventually stop producing eShop Cards), it might not be worth it.

Play Asia to the rescue again. It never worked with EU PayPal anyway.

I haven't taken that much of a deep dive on the Japanese eShop. But for me the only games I truly want from there are Tetris Diamond and City Connection Rocket, both originally Mobile games released as part of G-MODE Archives.
I'd say Dragon Quest Heroes I-II too, but not sure about it.

I tried to buy them with my Mexican debit card, which didn't work, and I had thought of using PayPal, but never actually looked into it.

I thought it was already the case (at least in Canada)? Well, that won't change things for me: if I need money for my japanese account, I'll need to purshase a japanese eShop card. And since the code is automatically send, I don't have to wait!

It's unlikely but maybe we're looking at a potentially region locked Switch 2. The Yen is somewhat weak at the moment and Nintendo won't want the Switch 2 to be unaffordable to their domestic market if the prices match worldwide.

Blocking the Japanese eShop to foriegn payments may make it less likely people try to import a potentially cheaper Switch 2 from Japan if it can only accept Japanese payment methods.

This is of course wild speculation!

Well that isn’t great Nintendo, and it is an “inconvenience” I was using the JP eshop to purchase Joysound Karaoke vouchers….

Been here, done that ... Playstation went through the same thing years back - I had a UK account because in 2012 when I join PSN, my country had no digital storefront.

Today it is so bad that not even amazon.co.uk sells gift cards without a real UK card, so the only way to buy stuff on the UK PSN store is to literally have a friend in the UK who will buy gift cards for you. Of course, unless you want to gamble your money on dubious sites or ebay.

So, expect worse to come.

Could Nintendo Life do a top ten best Japan-only games to buy before this happens please ?

@Bobb Currency conversion issues.
The yen is quite weak right now and people are exploiting that. In comparison, the euro and dollar right now are about neck and neck with each other

@iedutu There's always Playasia and Dundle

I was going to be annoyed but then I realized I only ever used my Japanese account on my Switch to download the Lost Sphear demo. I just buy from Amazon jp or playasia, never had much reason to buy from the Japanese eshop.

Sorry, it's because of me. I laundered money. Forgot to empty the pockets and take my yens before laundry.

Region free my butt!

How about letting us zero out accounts on our own, Nintendo.

It's not about fraudulent use. Visa and Mastercard have been bullying Japan for quite a while now. I'd rather have Japan be free of them entirely so they can stop trying to force Japanese companies and developers to do whatever they want.

@AStupidID
Top 30 would be better!

I'm still annoyed that Exclamation Warriors (DS or 3DS) never made the just to the US!

Doesn't apply to me. I've never even attempted to switch regions. Only reason I would do that is Mother 3, and I think I would rather wait for a remake.

Nah it's okay, for import games I had been using the digital eShop card from Play-Asia to do all my spending on the oversea shop.

I only used the Japanese e-shop once to buy Virtua Racing when it was a Japan exclusive, but I'll miss it if the same situation happens again!

I was under the impression that foreign credit cards never were accepted on the Jpn eshop! Years ago I tried and failed with my US credit card, and just resorted to buying and redeeming eshop card codes since.

95% of my Switch game library is physical, but I've picked up Japan-exclusive Arcade Archive games and other treats from the Jpn eshop over the years.

@Justifier
The game listings in the Japanese eshop show what languages the game is playable in.
Of course, the listings are in Japanese, but here are some examples:

The "Languages" header looks like 言語
English = 英語
French = フランス語
Spanish =　スペイン語
Korean = 韓国語
Japanese = 日本語

I can't remember the Japanese characters Mandarin and Simplified Chinese.

Hope it helps!

It's news to me that the possibility was even there. Might as well look into trying my luck with Belarusbank while there's still time - if a suitable target comes by. Too bad Neptunia Re;Birth trilogy doesn't support English over there (and neither does Girls und Panzer, IIRC?).

@Teksette for that matter, are there any reliable online sellers for Japanese eShop cards? Or do you have the stuff actually sold at local retail? (Which has been the case with several region varieties of PSN credits even here in Minsk so hey)

This is a let down. Eshop doesn't support my country so I buy games on US and JPN regions.

@Bobb
yeah while fortunately games releasing worldwide is more common i still never want to go back to the days of region locking, it was bad enough in the wiiu/3ds days when not only did the wiiu still have region lock at an era where other systems were abandoning it, but the 3ds also was region locked which was very rare for a handheld.

its one of the things from the past i never wanted to see return in modern gaming (alongside the the whole PAL/NTSC tv signal thing)

im hoping its just the payment thing since at the very least that can be circumvented with eshop cards

I’m pretty sure Paypal helped get my Paypal account suspended when I used it for JP eShop transactions, so I’ve been on Play-Asia digital codes ever since. So this change has zero effect on me. I also remember my Visa cards not working either, so I thought most foreign cards wouldn’t work. Maybe Amex works, who knows? As for fraudulent charges, as someone who’s worked in retail, ‘scammer’ cards exist that provide a CC number and all the necessary info in order to complete a transaction. One could even use them in fake wallet apps and tap to pay at Point of Sale devices. The catch is it’s not a free ride to go crazy with charges or it’ll flag, so there is usually a daily limit. I don’t know all the details, but I imagine it’s entirely feasible to use them for foreign transactions as well. I wouldn’t put it past the scammers to figure out how.

It never did, always had to be vouchers

What's the news? Almost every single japanese digital store work like that. Music, movie, streaming, all work the same way. Some digital stores are even more extreme and require connection from inside Japan to even open their page.

paypal is far more safer then using credit cards but i rather go to plays asia to import games.

Doesn’t take mine anyway. I’ve had to get Japanese eshop cards from PlayAsia if there was something I was after that wasn’t in the European shop.

Something tells me this isn't just about "fraudulent use." For people who don't know. American credit card companies have been opting out from many Japanese companies lately due to (imo) unreasonable reasons. For example "brand risk" reasons, which makes no sense, and is just an excuse for whatever true reason they have.

@Justifier It's also worth noting, in some cases, if you buy a game or DLC on one eShop and the SKUs coincide, they'll appear as purchased or available to redownload (if deleted/archived) in another eShop.

The most evident example is with most Nintendo games. Exceptions are those made by third-parties such as the Mario + Rabbids, the Square Enix games published by Nintendo in the west and I believe the Warriors games. Most likely due to differnt publishers.

For other companies, it depends.
For example for SEGA. some games are the same SKU, such as the SEGA AGES releases, but others are not, like Sonic Forces or Sonic Frontiers. If you have the games and donwload any of the DLC available on the Japanese eShop from either game, it will display them as a second icon on the HOME Menu. Same thing happens with some demos, such as the Epic Mickey one.

Then there may be rare cases where DLC for a game in one region may be part of an update in another.
This is the case with Super Bomberman R, there's some DLC for shiny skins for the 8 Bomber siblings available on the Japanese eShop, but I believe its contents were added in an update in the American version. However, the SKUs coincide and the Japanese DLC could be "applied" to my American version. Though in reality, nothing changed because I already had the update.

Huh. Didn’t know you could even do that and always assumed that you had to buy a Japanese eShop card to get stuff from there. Guess I’ll technically be right when this happens.

What a dumb decision.

shrugs been using wii/eshop points cards since the wii.

@Lightsiyd I’m not mistaken the top 4 most popular credit cards in Japan are all VISA.

It would take an awful lot to loosen that stranglehold. I doubt this move is specifically anti-VISA, as the majority of Japanese card purchases come from VISA-affiliated cards anyway.

@Kiyata seriously? What if Ubisoft only released games in French? Why is always the Japanese that get this complaint against them?

If Japanese companies want to release games in Japanese that's 100% their choice and they lose out on international revenue.

Possible chance of region locked Switch 2 even though other platforms don’t region lock their consoles anymore?

There's been a lot of press if you look in the right place over Japan's banking system cracking down on 'fraud' and any attempt by gaijins and other 'undesirables' being able to use their services.

Seriously, with how the Don is doing anything but making America great, by the end of the year, everyone will have, when they go on holiday, pay a few hundred of the local currency into a bank on day 1, since any attempt to use a non-local card will be instantly fraudulent.

@Maxz I agree that it's not a certain thing. What is certain is that Japan would be better off becoming more independent of Visa and Mastercard if what they've been doing is going to continue, and as of now, no one's reigning them in.

So, soft regional locking then?

I thought this thing only affecting JP adult games market.

Wonder if this is happening across the board? I use a South African account with a credit card and a Mexican account with PayPal as content on those stores is often cheaper than UK.

@Bobb scalping from foreign people for S2 is one of them. Weak jpy

@Lightsiyd I think part of this blame is also on so many point services Japan has

What's the point of having a region-free system if you can't make purchases outside your region?

@Teksette It's been inconsistent.
I used my USA card on my Japanese 3DS no problem for a few years a decade ago.
But then when I went to buy some on my Switch a couple years ago, it already refused my card and PayPal for being out of region.

now it makes me lost intrested buy DIgital, You better release Physical catridge everthing inside include all DLC

@nhSnork
Hi friend! Like others here, I bought Jpn eShop card codes from Playasia.
It’s only been 3 times for me, but all 3 times they’ve faithfully emailed me a valid card code within minutes of purchase. I’ll then go to the Jpn eShop to redeem the code right away.

It’s a shame we have to jump through hoops like this. I just pray that Nintendo doesn’t close this loophole, or lock foreign IPs out of the Jpn eShop entirely. We’ll see what the next gen brings soon enough.

My Japanese eShop account only exists for my Taiko no Tatsujin! Rhythm Festival Music Pass. I got an Asian copy to go with my TaTaCon and that apparently only accepts the Japanese Music Pass despite being in English. The account being linked to a Philippine e-debit card worries me.

@Kingoffighters point services? Please clarify how this would negatively influence their willingness to allow purchases from other regions?

@SearchingS Speaking of which, North America and Middle East and Southeast Asia are like the only regions that have not gotten Splatoon 3 with the Expansion Pass all included inside the cart even though all the other regions did.

This doesn't make sense to me because I could never get my US Paypal or card to work with either the JPN or EU eShops. Have always had to buy gift cards (from Play Asia), then add directly to my Nintendo account.

Is this because of Visa and Mastercard influencing many Japanese stores? I feel like there's something Nintendo isn't telling us

Here in Japan, I've never been able to use my Japanese credit card to buy games on the non-Japanese eShops every time I've wanted to buy a game that has no chance of being translated and released in Japan. I've had to rely on tricking my poor old mother back in the motherland to buy prepaid cards for me. Good thing she's easily trickable!

Fraudulent use yeah right.

oh Nintendo you never learn do you

I would bet revenue from people buying extra games due to availability of different regions (me) sort of balance out whatever revenue Nintendo might lose on people using other regions for buying a "cheaper version" (maybe some of these would never make the purchase otherwise either). So, making things more inaccessible in any form is just dumb imo, since an open world is far more attractive.

(I think Netflix took the opposite path of region locking, since I never could watch my account when I travelled which made me so frustrated, but in the past years they must have opened up since I haven't had any issues with that anymore )

Hah, this way they can stop claim that their system is region free, even if in reality it isn't.

Or they'll just region lock Switch 2. Afterall, Nintendo always knows better.

@HammerGalladeBro That's why I use the pirate page where they put the pirate games to get information because the piracy page shows you the internal identifier in hexadecimal number of the games and to which region that internal identifier belongs. For example Story of Season Pioneers of the Olive Town is a different region in 4 regions. This even helps with physical purchases, since if the game has a save bonus for having played the previous games, you can tell if it will work or not.

They didn't say anything about debit card. I hope it will still usable.

@Snake-Life Debit cards could pretty much be affected too.