Cash in Japan 2026: how much a wallet needs

Source: Pexels

Japan settled 58.0% of its household spending without cash in 2025, and ¥162.7 trillion moved through cards, codes and e-money. The remaining share still runs on banknotes and coins, in the places a visitor goes to: temple gates, market stalls, lockers. What to carry, where the card stops, and how 1 November changes the first days of a trip.

A card covers most of a Japanese day. It also fails, predictably, at the four or five counters that make a day worth having. Those failures cost more than the money involved: a gate with no reader, a stall with a hand-written price, a locker that wants one coin.

1What the cashless share leaves behind

METI puts the 2025 cashless ratio at 58.0%, against ¥162.7 trillion of spending. That's the domestic indicator the ministry adopted after its December 2025 review, and the target it set is 65% by 2030.

The Bank of Japan's September 2026 survey of 1,972 adults is the closest thing to a photograph of a wallet. The commonest answer was ¥5,000 up to ¥10,000, at 31.7% of respondents. Next came ¥10,000 up to ¥20,000 at 27.9%. Wallets holding ¥50,000 or more were 2.4%.

Cash use is softening rather than stopping. 37.9% said they used it less often than six months earlier, while 52.3% reported no change. The 7.1% who use no cashless method at all is up from 5.5% in March.

Banknotes in circulation averaged ¥115.0 trillion in September 2026, 2.0% below a year earlier, with ¥4.58 trillion of coins alongside. Currency is leaving the system slowly. What it leaves behind is the small operator: the gate with a wooden box, the stall with a price painted on cardboard, the locker that takes a coin and nothing else.

Read the two surveys together and the picture is a country where the card is ordinary and the exception is a kind of place. It isn't a kind of person, and it isn't a region.

For a visitor the reading is narrow. The cash a trip needs is a specific sum for specific counters, not a daily float to top up at an ATM.

2Where the card stops

A card works at a convenience store, a department store and most chain restaurants. The places it fails fall into five shapes, and they tend to be the ones worth the detour.

Source: Pexels

Temple gates

Kenchō-ji in Kamakura charges ¥500 for an adult and ¥200 for a child. Its visitor page says every payment is cash only, and the goshuin (朱印, the stamped page) is ¥500 each.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Ogiyoshisan, public domain

The offering box at a shrine runs on smaller money. Nobody counts what you drop, a ¥5 coin is a normal gift, and the box has no reader on it.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Ocdp, CC BY-SA 3.0

Markets

Tsukiji Outer Market answers the card question with a split on its own site. Some shops take a card and some don't, and it tells you to ask at the shop. The smaller the stall, the likelier the answer is no.

Source: Pexels

Small attractions

Arashiyama Monkey Park Iwatayama charges ¥800 for an adult and ¥400 for a child between four and fifteen. Its page states that credit cards and e-money aren't accepted at all, and that payment is cash only.

Lockers

The operator behind JR West's station lockers lists two kinds. The key lockers take cash; the ICOCA locker takes ¥100 and ¥500 coins, ¥1,000 banknotes or a transit IC card. Which one stands in your station is a matter of the station.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · duncan_su, CC BY 2.0

Stalls and standing counters

A festival stall runs on a cash box and an apron of change. Two hundred of them down one street are two hundred chances to be the visitor holding only a card.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Michael Haegele, CC BY 2.0

3How much to carry

No official body publishes an average cash-on-hand figure for visitors. Any single number for a trip is a guess wearing a statistic's clothes, so the range below is built from prices on this page and labelled as our arithmetic.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Mokkie, CC BY-SA 3.0

Start with a day that leans on cash. A temple gate is ¥500 and its goshuin another ¥500. A market breakfast is about ¥2,500, a coffee ¥500, dinner at a counter ¥3,000. That lands near ¥7,000 before a locker, a festival snack or the shop that takes nothing else.

Multiply by the shape of the trip. A week of hotels and trains, booked and paid on a card, needs less than four days that include a market, two temples and a matsuri. A family of four on the same day wants twice the range, in smaller banknotes.

Round up rather than down, and split the money: ¥10,000 in a wallet, the rest in a bag. A ¥10,000 banknote isn't awkward here, so carrying one costs nothing at the till.

Change is the other half of the problem. Break a ¥10,000 banknote at a convenience store rather than at a stall, and keep a ¥1,000 note and a few hundred in coins for the counters that can't break it.

A hotel safe and a front pocket do the rest. A wallet left on a bus is the one loss a trip can't repair.

4Coins, and the card that eats them

Coins make up ¥4.58 trillion of the currency in circulation, and most of the weight is small: ¥500, ¥100 and ¥10 do the work at lockers, machines and shrine boxes. The ¥5 and ¥1 coins are what collects at the bottom of a pocket.

A transit IC card turns that metal into a balance. Suica e-money works at shops carrying the mark, and at vending machines and coin lockers as well. JR East counted about 2.35 million member shops at the end of August 2026.

Source: Pexels

The balance ceiling is ¥20,000. A new card carries a ¥500 deposit, returned when you hand it back, so the float costs nothing but the walk to the ticket office.

Since 20 October 2026 the teppay code payment inside Mobile Suica raises that ceiling to ¥300,000 once My Number verification is done. That belongs to our Suica guide.

The move that follows: at the end of a day, pour the coins into a station charge machine and tap the card for the coffee. Keep roughly ¥1,000 in ¥100 coins for the lockers that take nothing else.

Source: Wikimedia Commons · Indiana jo, CC0

Drink machines are the category the government expected to lag. In July 2024 the finance minister forecast that only two or three in ten would take the new banknotes, and no 2026 figure has been published since. Treat a machine as coin-fed until its panel says otherwise.

5The tax-free switch on 1 November 2026

Sales made on or after 1 November 2026 are taxed at the till. The shop charges the tax-inclusive price, records the purchase with the tax agency, and the money comes back only after customs has watched the goods leave Japan with you.

At the till, the shop checks your passport and files the purchase in the tax agency's system. The customs check runs off that record rather than your receipt, and it's decided purchase by purchase.

The customs step happens in the international departure lobby before you check a bag. A terminal reads your passport and returns a green or red judgement; red sends you to an inspection desk with the goods. Seven airports — Narita, Haneda, Kansai, Chubu, Fukuoka, New Chitose and Naha — also accept the check through Visit Japan Web inside the departure-lobby Wi-Fi area.

You have 90 days from the purchase date. The ¥5,000 floor, measured before tax, stays where it was and applies to one shop's sales in one day. The ¥500,000 cap on consumables, the sealed packaging rule and the split between general goods and consumables are gone.

The rate behind the arithmetic is 10%, with 8% on food and drink bought to take away. A ¥30,000 purchase therefore carries ¥3,000 of tax, and that money sits in the shop's till until the refund lands.

There's no parallel period: the sale date decides which system applies, and a shop's existing licence carries across. The refund comes from the retailer or from the agent it appoints, and the tax law sets no method for paying it.

For the wallet, roughly 10% of a large purchase sits in the shop's till until you fly. Buy late in the trip, and keep the first days' cash budget loose. The refund mechanics are in our tax-free guide.

6Refilling the wallet

Seven Bank machines in 7-Eleven stores, Japan Post ATMs and AEON machines take foreign cards, and they're the three that work when the rest decline. Fees, per-withdrawal limits and the conversion prompt are in our ATM withdrawal guide.

Carry the debit card and the wallet refills itself. Carry only cash, and a lost wallet is the whole trip.

7At the till

Put the banknotes and coins on the small tray beside the register rather than into a hand. The cashier counts the change back onto the same tray, which is why nobody has to touch fingers.

Exact change is welcome and never required. The tray is where the arithmetic gets checked, so a handful of coins isn't a delay.

There's no tipping, and the price on the shelf is the price you pay. A ¥10,000 banknote for a ¥300 coffee is normal, and the till has the change. A card and cash ring up the same total at almost every counter in the country.

Say the amount as you set the money down, or point at the total on the register. Numbers are the part of a transaction that survives a language gap.

The change comes back counted, so put it away before you step aside. The queue behind you is the only thing a Japanese till is impatient about.

8Before you fly

Count the coins the night before you leave. The airport locker, the last coffee and the bus fare are coin or cash territory, and the final day is when a wallet runs dry.

Leave the last ¥3,000 in coins and small notes unspent. It pays the locker, the coffee and the bus at an hour when nothing else is open.

The three rows below are the part of the trip that takes a card, which is what keeps the cash free for the street.

9Questions and answers

The five questions a wallet raises before a Japan trip, answered for the rules in force from 1 November 2026.

Keep reading

Japan for the first time: the 2026 checklist What changes at the tax-free till on 1 November?

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