Originally Posted by oldfolky

Responding to COVID has massively improved the acceptance of all electronic payments everywhere in japan - Recruit and Square have been making hay with people’s fears around handling money. This does mean a lot more places take credit cards that didn’t before, and the same tech is enabling suica, PayPay, Line Pay etc. There’s just fewer places that don’t take cards or qr code payments.

That said suica is faster, because even a tap with a foreign credit card on Apple Pay can result in a signature, and there’s a general unfamiliarity with tap CC payments - a lot of insistence on sticking the card in the slot.

“Suica de hairimasu” “suica de harratemo ii desu ka” generally gets a good response.

As for loading - unfortunately it is pretty slow, about 45 seconds - has resulted in an embarrassing “Sumimasen charji ga hitsuyo desun ga” whilst at the register.