Payment Processing · Buyer guide
Since November 2022, the standard interchange rates that Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay set for card payments in Japan have been public. JCB, American Express and Diners Club, which run their own card issuing and merchant business, publish none. The three published after the Japan Fair Trade Commission recommended it in a report released in April 2022. On a Visa classic credit card at an ordinary business, Visa's table gives 2.28%. For small businesses it lists an "Introductory Rate – SMB" of 1.50%, without saying who qualifies, and Mastercard's table, dated 24 July 2026, has the same 1.50% for businesses that meet the conditions of its SME programme, which it does not publish.
The shop pays something else. It pays its payment provider's rate, which on the published prices runs from about 2% to 3.24% for an in-person card payment: 2.4% on KOMOJU's plan for qualifying small businesses, 2.5% at Square with no monthly fee, 3.24% at Stripe Terminal, and below 2% only on plans that charge a monthly fee, with QR codes, online payments and convenience-store payments all priced separately. And because Japan's consumption tax applies to some payment fees and not others, two rates that look comparable often are not. This guide sets out what each provider publishes, read from its own Japanese pages on 8 October 2026, and explains the tax basis behind each number.
The JFTC's survey of card transactions, published in April 2022, found an average merchant fee of 2.63% on Visa, Mastercard and UnionPay, and 2.89% on JCB, American Express and Diners Club. It quoted the government's 2021 growth strategy, which said, citing hearings, that interchange made up about 70% of the merchant fee. It also found that merchants who had ever negotiated their fee paid 2.42% on average, against 2.83% for those who had not.
Publishing interchange did not set a cap. The rates are standard rates that the networks choose, and Visa's varies by type of business and type of card, from 2.28% on a classic card to 2.88% on an Infinite card at an ordinary business. In a July 2025 decision accepting commitments from Visa, the JFTC noted that it had found no case of acquirers and issuers agreeing anything other than Visa's standard rates. The standard rates apply where the card issuer and the merchant's acquirer have not agreed another, and only between two different companies: the JFTC found that 54.6% of domestic card volume was "on-us", with the same company on both sides and no interchange between them. What publication gives a merchant is a benchmark to measure a Visa or Mastercard quote against.
Several Japanese providers that this site has not reviewed also publish rates, and give a sense of the market: Recruit's AirPAY charges 3.24% on cards, Rakuten Pay 2.20%, 2.48% or 3.24% on cards depending on the plan, and STORES 1.98% to 2.48% on Visa and Mastercard depending on whether you pay its monthly fee. They are listed for comparison only.
Japan's consumption tax is 10%. Whether it is added to a payment fee depends on how the provider's contract is built. Japan's National Tax Agency treats the discount a card company takes when it buys a merchant's card receivable as non-taxable. Providers that structure their card service that way quote card fees with no tax on top; fees for QR codes and prepaid electronic money are usually taxable. As each provider publishes it:
On KOMOJU's online card rate, the effect is concrete: 3.25% plus 10% tax is 3.575% of the sale, which puts it close to Stripe's 3.6% rather than a third of a point below it.
Code payments made up 10.2% of the value of Japan's cashless payments in 2025, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, against 82.7% for credit cards. Several providers accept PayPay and the other QR wallets on the same terminal as cards, at a higher rate: 3.25% at Square, 3.24% at KOMOJU's terminal, and 3.24% before tax for PayPay through Rakuten Pay.
Signing up with PayPay itself is cheaper. Its merchant fee is 1.98% before tax on the free plan, or 1.60% before tax if every store takes its Light plan at ¥1,980 a month per store. Payouts are free once a month, and an early payout costs 0.38% plus a ¥20 or ¥200 transfer fee. On ¥300,000 a month of PayPay sales, the free plan costs ¥6,534 with tax and the Light plan ¥7,458; the Light plan only pays for itself above about ¥520,000 a month per store. The same ¥300,000 through Square costs ¥9,750. The trade-off is a second account and a second payout to reconcile.
Take a shop taking ¥1,000,000 a month in person, 500 sales of ¥2,000, all on Visa and Mastercard. On the published rates:
KOMOJU calculates its fee and the tax on each sale and rounds both, which is why 2.88% of ¥1,000,000 comes to ¥29,000 rather than ¥28,800. Its terminal page does not say whether the 10% tax applies to terminal rates; with it, Square is the cheapest of the four. For reference, Visa's 1.50% introductory small-business interchange on the same sales would be ¥15,000, and its 2.28% general rate on classic cards ¥22,800. On a mix with many JCB and American Express cards, Square's single rate looks better still: KOMOJU's terminal charges those brands 3.2%.
Take the same ¥1,000,000 online, 500 orders of ¥2,000:
The ¥40 fixed fee is two percentage points on a ¥2,000 order. It matters much less on a ¥20,000 one, so a business with large orders should rerun the sums on its own basket.
We found no Japanese statute that bans card surcharges, unlike the outright ban in some other countries. But the JFTC's 2022 survey found surcharge-prohibition clauses at all five international card brands it surveyed and at 88.3% of the card companies, and JCB's own FAQ says its merchant contracts prohibit adding a fee. The JFTC noted that a blanket ban could raise problems under the Antimonopoly Act where it lessens competition between merchants, but such clauses were in every brand's contracts in the 2022 survey, and JCB's FAQ, updated in September 2025, still says so. In practice the fee comes out of your margin, as it does under Australia's new rules described in the site's guide to the end of card surcharges there.
A shop near tourist sites will also see foreign cards. Stripe adds 2% when it has to convert currency, and the site's guide to dynamic currency conversion explains what happens when a terminal offers a tourist their home currency instead.
