[snogglethorpe]

> Japanese people often tell me that Japanese don't like to use credit cards. But ask them, do they have one? (of course! they say), do they use it online? (of course! they say). So it's true in real life, not just in this report.

Existing online services don't generally give you a lot of choice for payment.

"No other choice" != "Like".

Credit cards and bank transfers (which in Japan are very simple) have different strengths, but the one that sticks out for me is that a bank transfer keeps more control with the buyer, and exposes the buyer to less long-term risk: The service provider can steal your money by not providing the service, but they don't have any info they can use to steal money in the future.

[w00kie]

I would argue that you are usually covered by fraud insurance by default when paying with your credit which is probably not true of bank transfers.

[snogglethorpe]

Sure, but it's a different sort of protection, and although it's better in some ways (if you do things right, you can often get your money back for an existing transaction), it doesn't necessarily offer the same peace of mind as the more fundamental protection offered by a "push-only" system (bank transfers) compared to a "pull" system (credit cards).

In particular, a common worry with credit cards is that if you use them often for small transactions, your info will eventually fall into the wrong hands and then all bets are off.

In terms of peace-of-mind, there's a lot to be said for a system where payments are purely user-initiated...

[Presumably some variants on credit-cards can increase the security, e.g. generating a temporary card number when your bank offers such a feature, but these may lose some of the convenience advantages that are credit-cards' main selling point...]