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1. チャノさん (japananon@mitra.anon-kenkai.com)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Apr-2024 14:05:26 JST チャノさん

   My opinion of BitDeMoney is starting to go down... according to their new terms, you only need to do phone verification if you want to buy over 10,000 yen per month, and under that e-mail is sufficient. That sounded fine to me... small purchases being spread out over time works just as well.

   But now, I find that the Rakuten Pay gift cards under 50,000 yen are all out of stock. I contacted their support to inquire, and was told "Rakuten cards are more difficult to get these days, so we're focusing on restocking large value cards only". That sounds like bullshit to me... I haven't seen any shortage of them at the conbini, and some of them actually let you choose the charge amount when you pay at the register.

   So I suspect that the site is keeping the low value cards out of stock intentionally and only restocking the 50,000 yen ones to force users to register a phone number. If true, it means the site operators aren't as anti-regulation as I thought they'd be, and are cooperating with the authorities to pressure the users instead of the other way around. Either way, disappointing.

   • Mark (mark@nicecrew.digital)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Apr-2024 14:30:10 JST Mark

     in reply to
     @japananon Why would they do that? The only reason would be that they're threatened by the state into doing this, or they think that it will allow them to lay low and don't attract attention, but even then why not just say it.
     Seems weird.
   • チャノさん (japananon@mitra.anon-kenkai.com)'s status on Tuesday, 09-Apr-2024 14:30:10 JST チャノさん

     in reply to

     • Mark

     @Mark It's worth noting, other prepaid services don't seem to have the same issue. Steam Cards, Amazon Gift Cards, all those remain in stock at smaller denominations. Only Rakuten Gift cards are in this situation.

     It's possible this is caused by Rakuten Corp itself... re-selling Rakuten Gift cards might be a grey area, and forcing users to self-dox with a phone number might be an insurance policy to avoid trouble if it comes down. Given that Rakuten points can be fed directly into a RakutenPay account and used to purchase almost anything anywhere, they might be working to mitigate exactly the loophole I was happily exploiting until now. It's all very opaque, though.