Guides · Sun 25 Oct 2026
Cash or card in Japan: what you need, and where to find it
Japan takes cards in far more places than its cash-only reputation suggests, but the cash-only places are predictable ones. What to carry, what to tap, and where to find an ATM that accepts a foreign card.
The short answer: Japan is more cashless than its reputation and less cashless than its cities suggest. On the economy ministry's measure, cashless payments reached 42.8 percent of consumer spending by value in 2024, past the government's own target of 40 percent. In a Tokyo convenience store or a Kyoto department store, a foreign card settles almost everything. But the cash economy has not disappeared; it has retreated into specific, predictable corners, and those corners include some of the best parts of a trip: the tiny noodle shop, the shrine on the hill, the village bus. Carry both. What follows is where each method works, where cash is genuinely required, and where to find more of it when the wallet runs low.
Where your card works, and where it stops
In the cities, acceptance is broad. Convenience stores, chain restaurants, department stores, hotels, larger shops and the big attractions take foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard as a matter of routine, and American Express is commonly accepted alongside them. The card logos by the till are the signal to trust: where your brand is shown, the terminal is set up for it. Expect a mix of tapping, inserting and the occasional signature; the terminal decides, and all three are normal.
Acceptance thins where the chains end. Small independent restaurants and bars, especially away from the city centres, may take no cards at all, and some ticket machines, market stalls and rural shops are cash only. A foreign card can also be declined by a machine that ought, on paper, to accept it. That is a known quirk of cross-border cards rather than a mistake on your part, and it is why the cash float further down is not optional.
The IC card is the everyday default
For day-to-day spending the workhorse is not the bank card but the IC card: Suica in Tokyo, Icoca in Kansai and their regional equivalents, working on one national network. JR East states that the visitor version, the Welcome Suica, can be used throughout the country. Trains, buses, taxis, convenience stores, vending machines and a long tail of shops take a tap of the card, and paying this way spares you the flood of coins that cash fares generate.
Visitors have three routes in. The Welcome Suica, sold at the Narita and Haneda airport stations and at major Tokyo stations, carries no deposit and runs for 28 days; its balance cannot be refunded, so spend it down rather than loading it on the last day. The standard Suica asks a refundable deposit of 500 yen, returned less a 220 yen handling fee when the card goes back to a station. The third route is digital: add a Suica in Apple Wallet on an iPhone, or use JR East's Welcome Suica Mobile app, and the card lives on the phone instead. The same phone can carry your data, too: an eSIM has you connected from the moment you land, and our sister company Maison V has written up running a whole Japan trip on one, Moshi moshi: Japan calling.
Here is the catch that surprises people: the physical cards are charged with cash. JR East is explicit that the Welcome Suica cannot be charged by credit card; the machines at stations take notes and coins. The mobile versions break the loop, because the Welcome Suica Mobile app charges the card from a credit card held in Apple Pay, up to a maximum balance of 20,000 yen. Android phones bought outside Japan generally lack the contactless chip the IC system uses, so for most Android owners the physical card, and its cash top-ups, are the route.
Where cash is genuinely required
Shrines and temples run on small cash. The offering goes into the wooden box in coins or a small note, charms and amulets at the shrine office are paid for in cash, and the entry fee for a temple garden is handed over at a window, not a card reader.
Small restaurants and bars are the biggest cash category. The classic ticket-machine noodle shop, where a meal ticket is bought from a machine by the door before you sit down, is frequently cash only, though some machines now take IC. Family-run places away from the centres may take nothing but notes and coins.
Transport and stalls off the main network complete the list. Away from the IC area, a local bus may collect the fare in cash at the door, small stations can be unstaffed, and some car parks and older coin lockers still want coins; newer lockers take IC, but a pocket of 100 yen coins remains the reliable key. Festival and market stalls, where much of this site's calendar ends up, are cash almost by definition: the food, drinks and games are priced for coins and small notes.
One custom needs no cash at all: tipping. The Japan National Tourism Organization is plain that tipping is not common in restaurants, bars, cafes, taxis or hotels, and good service is not priced around it. The one exception worth knowing is kokorozuke, a gratuity offered in an envelope in specific situations, a private guide who has gone far beyond the job, for instance; the little envelopes are sold in convenience stores. On an ordinary trip it will not come up: pay the bill, say thank you, and keep your coins for the offering box.
Where to get cash
Two networks matter for foreign cards. The first is the convenience stores. Seven Bank's ATMs, the machines inside 7-Eleven, are set up for cards issued overseas across the main international brands: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, China UnionPay, Discover and Diners Club. Seven Bank's own limits are generous: up to 100,000 yen in one withdrawal, or 30,000 yen for a magnetic stripe card. Lawson Bank's machines in Lawson stores take overseas JCB cards across the chain and Visa and Mastercard on their newer machines, and the E-net machines in many FamilyMart stores take Visa, Mastercard, JCB and UnionPay around the clock. Convenience stores stand on corners all over the cities, which makes one of these machines the default cash stop of a Japan trip.
The second network is Japan Post Bank, whose ATMs sit in post offices, in many stations and in compact form inside some FamilyMart stores. Its published list for cards issued abroad runs to Visa, Mastercard, Maestro, Cirrus, JCB, China UnionPay and Discover, with a limit of 50,000 yen per transaction and a fee of 220 yen per use applying to some overseas cards, on top of whatever your own bank charges. Note that American Express is not on the Japan Post Bank list, one of several small mismatches between networks. The ordinary ATMs of Japanese banks, by contrast, mostly do not take foreign-issued cards at all, so do not plan around them.
Fees arrive in layers: the machine's own charge where there is one, then your home bank's foreign withdrawal and currency fees. Seven Bank does not publish one fee for overseas cards, because the charge varies by card brand; the amount appears on screen before you confirm. Withdraw fewer, larger amounts rather than many small ones, and the layers stay thin.
Three traps
The home currency offer. Some ATMs and card terminals, Seven Bank's machines included for Visa and Mastercard, offer to settle in your home currency instead of yen. It reads as a kindness, because the amount looks familiar, but the conversion is made at a rate set for that transaction rather than the rate your card network would apply, and it is rarely the better rate. Choose yen when the choice appears and let your own bank do the converting.
The airport exchange counter. Changing money at the airport tends to be the most expensive way to hold yen, because the rate carries the convenience. If you land with no yen at all, the airport machines from the networks above are the better first stop; keep the exchange counter, if you use it at all, for a small amount to bridge the gap.
The card that works everywhere except here. A card can be refused by one network and accepted by a machine on the next street, and magnetic stripe cards face the lower limits described above. Carry two cards on different networks if you can, and keep the second separate from the first.
How much to carry
Treat these as rules of thumb, not rules. On a city day, a float of about 5,000 yen covers the cash-only moments, a ticket-machine lunch, offerings at a shrine, a locker, small change at a market, while the IC card carries the transport and the bank card carries the bigger spending. On a rural day, or a festival day when the stalls are the point of the trip, carry 10,000 to 15,000 yen: fares, food, temple entries and an IC top-up all come out of the same wallet, and the nearest foreign-card ATM may be a town away. There is no need to arrive holding a week of yen. The withdrawal limits above are far larger than a daily float, so top up at a convenience store ATM as the notes run down.
One mechanical point: the smallest banknote is 1,000 yen, so paying in cash sheds coins constantly. Spend them as you go, at the convenience store and the vending machine, rather than carrying a kilo of them home.
Money is one strand of the practical side of a trip. The practical page covers the customs, plugs and border rules that catch visitors out, getting there handles the airports and the first trains into town, and the rail pass guide does the arithmetic on the pass that shapes many travel budgets.
Sources: Seven Bank, using a card issued overseas (accepted brands, the 100,000 yen and 30,000 yen withdrawal limits, the currency choice); Japan Post Bank, international ATM service (accepted brands, the 50,000 yen limit, the 220 yen fee); JR East, Welcome Suica and its FAQ (28 day validity, no deposit, cash charging, no refunds) and Welcome Suica Mobile (charging by Apple Pay, the 20,000 yen maximum balance); Japan National Tourism Organization, tipping in Japan; Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the 2024 cashless payment ratio of 42.8 percent, published March 2025. Checked 25 October 2026. Operators can change fees, limits and acceptance; the screen at the machine is the final word.
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