I know that (US) Charles Schwab debit cards will be refused on Japanese steam or PS stores as their algorithm can tell the card is NOT from Japan since their system only recognizes cards that are issued from their own country. The same applies if a foreigner tries imputting a Charles Schwab card onto the Japanese app store (iOS) leading to rejections.
The same thing applies to both Revolut & Wise: as Japan PS store, Steam & App Store refuse cards that aren’t matching the region (perhaps due to potential fraud). It doesn’t matter if you have either, since PS store (JPN) for example won’t accept it, since they only cater to cards that are issued from the same region the store front is set in.
Payment methods are used to confirm your country of residence for region locking purposes. If the payment method and billing address aren’t from the same country, the payment method will be denied as anyone can fill in any address they find on the internet, but payment methods like bank cards need to be tied to an actual address. This is also why it’s hard (though not impossible) to purchase digital gift cards for people in other countries.
This is a common misunderstanding that Americans have. The truth is that American banks issue domestic-only cards that cannot be used outside of the USA. You can get an international credit card and it works everywhere.
In most other countries, certainly where I live (Israel), all credit cards are intentional by default and they work wherever you go in the world.
So the truth is that, as is often the case, USA with American exceptionalism has created an incompatible system to everyone else, and then suffers the consequences.
I just moved from the US to New Zealand at the beginning of the year, and all of my credit and debit cards work down here. None of them were explicitly labeled as “international.” Maybe this is true, but it’s clearly not as common as you think.
It depends on the issuing institutions. Most credit/debit cards can deal in foreign transactions but some banks/credit unions block those types of transactions to prevent fraud/stolen card details.
I have no personal experience with this, just stuff I’ve heard online and from friends. I may well have some details wrong, but the truth is I’ve always been able to use my Visa credit card for any online shop from any country, including ones which Americans were having trouble with.
I think some shops (and maybe countries) which have a strong trade/tourism relationship with USA will just go out of their way to support American “non-international” cards. Whether that is the case for you in New Zealand, I can’t say.
I don’t have much stake here and I admit I could have gotten something wrong.
For Japan specifically, some retailers want to use 3dsecure (or something like that; it’s changed names and versions a few times over the years) which is only supported by domestic cards. Marketplaces that don’t care about that might be fine, or they might disallow based on some other criteria.
Pricing is different per region, and they don’t want you shipping for apps from a cheaper region.
Due to different purchasing power and average incomes between countries, online stores will usually apply regional pricing so people can afford to buy software (because if they don’t people will just pirate). However platforms like steam have the unfortunate problem where because you can gift and trade game keys, items from your steam inventory, etc… there have been cases where people will tunnel with a VPN to a nation with favorable currency exchanges/low regional prices, and buy things there despite not living in the area or having the same purchasing power.
To prevent this, platforms will prevent users from paying in currencies other than what their “home” location is, especially online (I think valve even locks games in CIS nations that make them unable to be gifted or played outside the territory).
It really depends on the region/countries. You can use US cards in Canada freely for instance
I didn’t have any issues using my cards when I was in Europe. But IDK how it is in Japan. 🤷♂️
Tho I will say in high school, I had friends that imported shit (mostly video games and anime only released in Japan) using credit cards. So if they really don’t tske foreign cards there now, it happened sometime after 2003.
