PAPER BILLS AND DIGITAL THRILLS

In the grandiose age of a cashless world, where debit cards, electronic payment Apps and QR codes reign supreme, you’d think that paying a bill would be as smooth as a freshly minted coin gliding over silk.

There are so many options out there to part with your hard-earned money electronically: Some are universal, such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or PayPal. Others are localised solutions, such as the hugely popular Twint in Switzerland, or the widely used PayPay, LINE Pay or Rakuten Pay in Japan.

But when a rare paper bill lands on your doorstep, then you suddenly find yourself challenged.

Rewind to January: I signed up for a smartphone plan with a new service provider, fully expecting the monthly fees to be debited automatically, either to my bank account or my credit card. ‘Don’t worry,’ they said, ‘just one paper bill for the first month,' as it would take a while to set up the direct debit.

Fast forward two months, and there it was, lying in my letterbox - the paper bill for the initial EUR 24, like a relic from bygone times, staring at me and challenging me to decide how to actually pay it.

Choices flashed before me:

- Brave the rare and mythical opening hours of a bank

- Pretend it’s 1800 and queue at the post office

- Or make the ‘convenient’ trek to one of the many convenience stores dotting the Japanese landscape

But upon closer examination of the paper bill, I saw this: Pay with your PayPay App! My saviour in shiny pixels promised electronic bill payment, sparing me a physical trip to the nearest store.

PayPay is versatile, I give you that. It's accepted pretty much everywhere in the country, and you have the option to top it up with cash, or to link a debit or credit card.

As I trust a physical credit card more than a virtual balance on an App (call me old-fashioned), I’ve never been tempted to top up my PayPay balance and only use the App as a backup for those instances when a shop doesn’t accept credit cards - which, in a country where cash has ruled supreme for centuries and where old habits die hard, does happen on occasion.

Ironically, shop owners will shun the use of credit cards, but have moved with the times enough to take payments with mobile payment Apps. It's not without reason that Japan is often dubbed the 'country of contrasts and contradictions’.

So, what could be easier than just pay the mobile phone bill digitally on my smartphone, right? But not so fast!

When embarking on endeavours like this, I always make sure that I have my trusted wife by my side. I might win out when it comes to digital skills, but when it comes to the Japanese language, she clearly has the edge - for obvious reasons (being Japanese).

It soon turned out that, also on this particular occasion, this was a wise decision, because we soon realised that we first needed to set up a link to PayPay in the service provider's own App, and while PayPay is displayed in English, the service provider's App is not…

It took us a mere 15 minutes to set it up, with help from ChatGPT on her mobile phone.

Finally, I was ready to scan the barcode on the bill and make the payment. Or so I thought.

However, it soon emerged that my usual method, i.e. to have the amount directly charged to my credit card, wasn't available. Another search on ChatGPT confirmed that this option doesn't exist for paying this bill.

Apparently, I needed to top up the balance on the App instead.

My spouse asked me how I usually do this. I said I don't, as I always go through the credit card in my electronic wallet, which only earned blank stares from her. It was obvious that I was not making sense to her. So I went to explain.

Another ten minutes later we were finally on the same page.

But how difficult could it be to top up the balance?

So I pressed the ‘top up’ button, entered the exact amount on the bill - and was met with the message 'There is no valid top up method'. Huh?

Instead, it listed 'other top up methods':

• Add new bank account

• ATM top up

• PayPay Bank

• Points Code

• PayPay Credit Card

• Exchange

• Yahoo! Flea market auction sales

• Receive balance from friends

All of them either undesirable, not available to me, or a complete mystery of what they meant...

'Flea market auction sales'? All I wanted to do is to pay a bill, not to set up an antiques dealing business...

So, ChatGPT to the rescue again.

It turned out that you cannot top up the PayPay balance with a credit card - unless it's the exclusive PayPay credit card, issued by the company running the App itself, and which I obviously don’t possess, and have no intention of signing up for.

My wife - never one to give up so easily - was already eagerly tapping away on her smartphone again, in her quest to help me pay the EUR 24 without major inconvenience - despite the major inconvenience we had already incurred during the past half hour.

Meanwhile, I mentally prepared for the ultimate surrender: a pilgrimage to the nearest 7-Eleven. I know when it’s time to admit defeat.

Final chapter: Yesterday, I marched into the 7-Eleven, bill in hand and ready to wield my trusty credit card… only to be met by a cruel twist of fate. ‘Credit cards? Oh no, Sir, not for bill payments. But you can use a NANACO card!’ A what?

As I would later learn from my wife, NANACO is a prepaid electronic payment card operated by 7-Eleven. Naturally, I don’t have one. Nor am I inclined to apply for one.

So, cash it was.

But at least I helped promote the use of the fancy new banknotes - with their anti-counterfeiting holograms, which were released by the Bank of Japan only just last year. It would be a shame if everyone were paying cashless, preventing them from circulating, right?