Credit card comparisons

[Viralriver]

Hi all, this is going to be a really general thread so willing to hear anecdotes and cards I might have missed.

Right now I own the following 2 credit cards:

• SMBC Prime Gold: 5,500 JPY annual fee, 1,000,000 credit limit. Reduces to 2,750 JPY annual fee with a minimum spend (which I will always hit).
• Rakuten standard: free, 1,000,000 credit limit

I started with the SMBC one but as I moved into the Rakuten eco-system (mainly for furusato donations and securities) I opened up the Rakuten credit card. Now I make enough purchases with Rakuten that I feel like it might be worth applying to move to either their Gold or Platinum card, but I'd also like to consider what I do with SMBC as I feel like having a good credit history with them can help me in the future with house loans. Thoughts?

SMBC also have a "Platinum preferred" card which isn't free for the first year unfortunately, and costs a whopping 33k annually. But, they have a campaign which gives you 40k points if you spend 400k in the first 3 months (which I could hit if I stop using Rakuten completely for a bit), triple points for usage abroad, an extra 10k points per 1m JPY spent annually (40k points max) which would essentially make the card free if I could hit that number - I won't lol. Plus it gives 1% points in general, whereas the Gold and below is 0.5% (pretty bad, I know). They do say up to 9% points in "preferred stores" but not looked into this too much.

SMBC's travel insurance also seems to be great (5000万円 for the above cards).

Rakuten's Gold card is 2,200 JPY and I can probably waive this via one of their campaigns, I get +3x points in their marketplace and get to use the airport lounge twice per year (SMBC is unlimited). No domestic travel insurance.

Rakuten's Premium card is 11,000 JPY, again I probably get a decent number of points if I switch, and I'll get +5x points in their marketplace. Can use the airport lounges with no restriction, and also get domestic travel insurance. For me, the 5x points is what makes it appealing, but I don't want to get shafted by any upper limits they have, as I did in my first year of furusato when I maxed out on the 買い回り campaign, thought I had 40k points but got about half of that because I hit all their upper limits lol.

Rakuten also offers 1% points in general, which is nice.

I feel like I've just ranted about benefits of gold and plat/premium for SMBC and Rakuten, and didn't offer much of a comparison, but really I just want to start a conversation here - maybe I've missed something really obvious that someone will point out, who knows .

[TBS]

Now I make enough purchases with Rakuten that I feel like it might be worth applying to move to either their Gold or Platinum card, but I'd also like to consider what I do with SMBC as I feel like having a good credit history with them can help me in the future with house loans. Thoughts?

...

Rakuten's Gold card is 2,200 JPY and I can probably waive this via one of their campaigns, I get +3x points in their marketplace and get to use the airport lounge twice per year (SMBC is unlimited). No domestic travel insurance.

Rakuten's Premium card is 11,000 JPY, again I probably get a decent number of points if I switch, and I'll get +5x points in their marketplace. Can use the airport lounges with no restriction, and also get domestic travel insurance. For me, the 5x points is what makes it appealing, but I don't want to get shafted by any upper limits they have, as I did in my first year of furusato when I maxed out on the 買い回り campaign, thought I had 40k points but got about half of that because I hit all their upper limits lol.

Rakuten's basic card also has +3x points on 楽天市場, so the Gold card is no better in that respect now. The Gold card used to be +5x I think, but then they nerfed it recently.

The Rakuten Premium card makes sense for those spending over 550,000 yen a year on 楽天市場, as then the extra +2x then pays back the 11,000 JPY/y fee. It is a good option for people with high salaries who also do furusato nozei via the ichiba.

I (personally) wouldn't be concerned about building a credit history/paying yearly fees with any card company just for possible benefits on home loans in future. It is much more important when buying property to just find the best loan rate & mortgage conditions available to you on the market at that time. It's unlikely that it will be with your credit card company bank.

The SMBC Platinum preferred card doesn't strike me as too much of a good deal from what you wrote - basically not getting a lot more than you'd get with Rakuten for a cheaper yearly fee. A Wise card will be better for abroad spending due to better FX rates.

Look out for promotional deals on new cards. Line had a very good one in recent years IIRC which paid more than 1% cashback.

[beanhead]

The Rakuten Premium card makes sense for those spending over 550,000 yen a year on 楽天市場, as then the extra +2x then pays back the 11,000 JPY/y fee. It is a good option for people with high salaries who also do furusato nozei via the ichiba.

This is only for 楽天市場, correct?
Rakuten Securities is not included... if it was, then the card would be worth it!

[zeroshiki]

Hi all, this is going to be a really general thread so willing to hear anecdotes and cards I might have missed.

Right now I own the following 2 credit cards:

• SMBC Prime Gold: 5,500 JPY annual fee, 1,000,000 credit limit. Reduces to 2,750 JPY annual fee with a minimum spend (which I will always hit).
• Rakuten standard: free, 1,000,000 credit limit

I started with the SMBC one but as I moved into the Rakuten eco-system (mainly for furusato donations and securities) I opened up the Rakuten credit card. Now I make enough purchases with Rakuten that I feel like it might be worth applying to move to either their Gold or Platinum card, but I'd also like to consider what I do with SMBC as I feel like having a good credit history with them can help me in the future with house loans. Thoughts?

SMBC also have a "Platinum preferred" card which isn't free for the first year unfortunately, and costs a whopping 33k annually. But, they have a campaign which gives you 40k points if you spend 400k in the first 3 months (which I could hit if I stop using Rakuten completely for a bit), triple points for usage abroad, an extra 10k points per 1m JPY spent annually (40k points max) which would essentially make the card free if I could hit that number - I won't lol. Plus it gives 1% points in general, whereas the Gold and below is 0.5% (pretty bad, I know). They do say up to 9% points in "preferred stores" but not looked into this too much.

SMBC's travel insurance also seems to be great (5000万円 for the above cards).

Rakuten's Gold card is 2,200 JPY and I can probably waive this via one of their campaigns, I get +3x points in their marketplace and get to use the airport lounge twice per year (SMBC is unlimited). No domestic travel insurance.

Rakuten's Premium card is 11,000 JPY, again I probably get a decent number of points if I switch, and I'll get +5x points in their marketplace. Can use the airport lounges with no restriction, and also get domestic travel insurance. For me, the 5x points is what makes it appealing, but I don't want to get shafted by any upper limits they have, as I did in my first year of furusato when I maxed out on the 買い回り campaign, thought I had 40k points but got about half of that because I hit all their upper limits lol.

Rakuten also offers 1% points in general, which is nice.

I feel like I've just ranted about benefits of gold and plat/premium for SMBC and Rakuten, and didn't offer much of a comparison, but really I just want to start a conversation here - maybe I've missed something really obvious that someone will point out, who knows .

If you just want to keep a SMBC card, you could reduce down to the basic card and then open an SBI account and do the 50k a month tsumitate with them. You gain the points, you invest and you keep a SMBC card.

For points maximization, the king of the hill will always be Rakuten unless you have something very specific in mind (there's the SPG card for travel and stuff or the EPOS card that you can use with SUICA).

If I were you I'd just keep the 2 cards with the above considerations. If you spend enough on Rakuten to have the Premium card make sense, and you will if you basically run your life through 1 credit card, then all the better. Premium also has the bonus points every Tuesday/Thursday and days ending in 5 or 0 so if you combine those with one of their sports teams winning and a super sale, you get tons of points.

The Rakuten Premium card makes sense for those spending over 550,000 yen a year on 楽天市場, as then the extra +2x then pays back the 11,000 JPY/y fee. It is a good option for people with high salaries who also do furusato nozei via the ichiba.

This is only for 楽天市場, correct?
Rakuten Securities is not included... if it was, then the card would be worth it!

All the bonus points with Rakuten that people talk about are mostly Ichiba only. There are some others like Pay or Edy but those are specific situations.

[TBS]

This is only for 楽天市場, correct?
Rakuten Securities is not included... if it was, then the card would be worth it!

Correct, it is 楽天市場 only.

If anyone is thinking of upgrading to a Rakuten Gold or Premium card, they are currently offering 2000/3000 points respectively if you get a second card: https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/campaign/add-card/
This offsets first year costs and basically makes the Gold card free for the first year.

[Edit: thought the deal was time limited but it's not.]

[Viralriver]

This is only for 楽天市場, correct?
Rakuten Securities is not included... if it was, then the card would be worth it!

Correct, it is 楽天市場 only.

If anyone is thinking of upgrading to a Rakuten Gold or Premium card, they are currently (until tomorrow morning) offering 2000/3000 points respectively if you get a second card: https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/campaign/add-card/
This offsets first year costs and basically makes the Gold card free for the first year.

On that very campaign page they offer the idea of opening a Gold or Premium card with these additional 2000/3000 points, but when you look at the T&C at the bottom it states that the 2000 point campaign (i.e. the campaign of this very page, for opening a second card) is no longer valid if that's the card you choose to make. Would have been a nice 4000/5000 points otherwise - but really that's got to be some sort of misleading advertising.. They shouldn't be advertising the Gold/Premium on that page if it's not part of the campaign lol.

[beanhead]

On that very campaign page they offer the idea of opening a Gold or Premium card with these additional 2000/3000 points, but when you look at the T&C at the bottom it states that the 2000 point campaign (i.e. the campaign of this very page, for opening a second card) is no longer valid if that's the card you choose to make. Would have been a nice 4000/5000 points otherwise - but really that's got to be some sort of misleading advertising.. They shouldn't be advertising the Gold/Premium on that page if it's not part of the campaign lol.

If you click through the details from that page you see that the 2,000 points for Gold are included.
楽天ゴールドカードへ切り替えで2,000ポイントプレゼント！

So bad communication, agreed, but it is not some kind of bait and switch.

[Viralriver]

I'm going to disagree with you on that, unless I'm majorly mistaken - there's a different campaign for 2k points for opening a gold card, and 3k for a platinum (or 4k if you're a Diamond member). That page explicitly shows the Gold and Platinum as part of the second card 2k point campaign, but in the T&C below says they're not - but you do get either the 2k/3k from the separate campaign of opening a Gold/Platinum. So yeah you get the points, but it's from a different campaign. So those who know of the other campaign who think they're getting double points are... not correct .

But looking into all of this made me find out that Diamond members get 4k for a Platinum card so I think I'm going to go ahead and open one of those. zeroshiki above mentioned the additional days of extra points that I completely forgot about, and I have a relatively expensive office chair purchase coming up so I think it makes sense. Then will need to go to SMBC and downgrade their card!

A somewhat unrelated question, but I see that Rakuten's ETC advertises 1 point for every 100 yen used - does anyone know if this is in addition to the 1% points you would already receive from the credit card?

[zeroshiki]

A somewhat unrelated question, but I see that Rakuten's ETC advertises 1 point for every 100 yen used - does anyone know if this is in addition to the 1% points you would already receive from the credit card?

Seems like its the same one. This site talks about the merits of Rakuten ETC and doesn't mention anything about double points.

https://manetatsu.com/2021/01/315081/

It does mention that there's ETC mileage points so you get double points that way.

Also just to be clear, I don't think the Premium card is a Platinum card. I think its considered a Gold Card in the normal sense. So you won't get Platinum privileges from Visa or Mastercard.

When I first got a Rakuten Gold card a long time ago, all the benefits in the Premium card were in Gold so I understand Premium is just a sneaky way for Rakuten to increase the yearly fee for the gold card without explicitly doing so.

[Viralriver]

A somewhat unrelated question, but I see that Rakuten's ETC advertises 1 point for every 100 yen used - does anyone know if this is in addition to the 1% points you would already receive from the credit card?

Seems like its the same one. This site talks about the merits of Rakuten ETC and doesn't mention anything about double points.

https://manetatsu.com/2021/01/315081/

It does mention that there's ETC mileage points so you get double points that way.

Also just to be clear, I don't think the Premium card is a Platinum card. I think its considered a Gold Card in the normal sense. So you won't get Platinum privileges from Visa or Mastercard.

When I first got a Rakuten Gold card a long time ago, all the benefits in the Premium card were in Gold so I understand Premium is just a sneaky way for Rakuten to increase the yearly fee for the gold card without explicitly doing so.

Thanks for that link - yeah it looks like the main additional merit is the mileage points so I need to look into that. I do get the card for free with SMBC as long as I use it at least once a year, whereas the requirement to maintain Diamond/Platinum rank status for it to be free is a little stricter. But it looks like if I'm a Gold/Premium card holder it's also free that way which is nice.

As for your comment on the Platinum/Premium - that's my bad I had the two words mixed up in my head. I actually have never heard of these "Platinum priviledges" before, so here's another rabbit hole for me to jump into!