Japan To Begin Experiments Issuing Digital Yen (reuters.com) 20
More than 30 major Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common, private digital currency to promote digitalisation in one of the world's most cash-loving countries, the group's organising body said on Thursday. From a report: The move follows the Bank of Japan's recently announced plan to experiment with issuing a digital yen, underscoring a growing awareness of the need for Japan to catch up to rapid global advances in financial technology. The group, consisting of Japan's three biggest banks as well as brokerages, telecommunication firms, utilities and retailers, will conduct experiments for issuing a digital currency that will use a common settlement platform. "Japan has many digital platforms, none of which are big enough to beat cash payments," Hiromi Yamaoka, a former BOJ executive who chairs the group, told an online briefing. "We don't want to create another silo-type platform. What we want to do is to create a framework that can make various platforms mutually compatible," Yamaoka said.
We have already digital money for decades... (Score:3)
how is this different (Score:2)
Re:how is this different (Score:4, Informative)
I've lived in both US and Japan, travelled to Europe and Canada. I think I can bring a reasonably global perspective to this discussion. It's also clear you have no idea what's going on in Japan.
In Japan, almost all payments above a certain amount is via wire transfers, and has been since 1990s. In contrast, the US only relatively recently moved to that model, via the much more opaque online bill pay. In Japan, the payer pushes the money, like when sending monies to your friend in Venmo. I'm not 100% sure, but in the US, the payee pulls money.
Things like rent/mortage payments, credit card payments, salaries, utility bills, etc., are almost always have been paid via electronic means. This, in contrast to the US, where checks were, and are used, especially with smaller landlords. In Japan, it's quite customary with even smaller landlords to pay them using wire transfers.
It's typically the much smaller purchases -- up to about USD 200 -- that gets paid in cash. Think of paying for meals at a restaurant, paying for a cab or buying groceries. Here, cash becomes king because a lot of the smaller merchants do not have payment processing terminals.
I left paying for public transport out of this though -- primarily train operators use their own electronic payment networks. JR East started with Suica, way back in 2002 or thereabouts, as a RFID payments system. Others quickly followed, and interop was becoming a thing sometime around 2004 or 05. They added payments as a thing too, first in the convenience stores and newsstands owned by JR East, and later, probably, others.
I believe what BoJ is trying to do is to create a unified system of these disparate systems, to unify under one umbrella. If you travelled beyond the regional reach of your home system, very frequently the other systems were incompatible.
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Canadian ex-pat here. I visit when I can (which hasn't been possible recently of course.)
Canada stopped using pennies for cash transactions in May 2012. Thereafter, cash transactions were rounded to a nickel. I don't have good anecdotal evidence on who benefitted from the rounding. Perhaps merchants like Tim Horton's gamed their prices to take advantage?
On the other hand, electronic transactions were, and are, not rounded.
As for lines in Tim Horton's, I recall that their highway-stop locations on the 401 in
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An important consideration is that Japan is extremely safe. Forget your wallet loaded with cash in a busy restaurant, come back a few hours later, it is most likely where you left it. Or maybe someone put it on the counter, for everyone to see, so that you don't have to search for it, or, if you didn't find it, chances are it is at the local police station (koban), with its content untouched.
If you don't worry about getting robbed, and if you lose your wallet, people actually try to help you getting it back
Re:how is this different (Score:4, Insightful)
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American and UK will soon have a cashless marxist sociality
Quite the opposite. The motivation for this is to allow the banks to levy a direct income tax on everyone else.
If cash is scraped, you won't be able to put money anywhere other than a bank, which means they can "pay" you negative interest on your savings. At the moment cash pays 0% interest which is higher than, say, -0.5%.
This is capitalism without restraint, not Marxism.
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nonsense the banks don't set income tax rates
Not at the moment. Once they are the only legal repository for your money, they can levy any rate of tax on it they want (of course all that free market competition that the sector is famous for will keep them in check hahahaha).
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But I guess the government has to get everybody not using cash before they can implement their plan to have banks screw you with electronic currency records?
Yes. Because, as I explained, cash is 0% interest. That means that people can get a better interest on their money by taking it out of the bank and stuffing it under the mattress if the bank interest rate drops below 0. Instant bank runs.
Your wife has chosen not to use cash - the problem there is "chosen"; she can chose to switch back if she wants.
I guess you've been on the moon for a few years so here's some clues: interest rates in Europe are already under 0% for commercial accounts. Yes, companies are al
Said the guy with 9 fingers ... (Score:2)
I have a digital yen.
name it right (Score:1)
Trying to eliminate quasi-anonymous digital yen? (Score:3)
Japan has a rather fascinating ecosystem of quasi-anonymous digital payments already
-transit passes which can also be used at stores, with oddball overlaps - the JR passes cross with each other, and the passes for each region cross with each other within that region, but using something from out of region at a local store is very hit or miss
-Preloadable debit-type cards such as EDY, Nanaco (requires registration, administered by 7-11), Waon
For these you can get an initial card, choose to register it or not, and refill at vending machines with cash.
A move to this seems like an attempt at consolidating all this into something centrally managed and trackable.