Rakuten Mobile for Foreigners: Price, Payment Without a Credit Card, and Coverage

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Rakuten Mobile comes up constantly in conversations among foreign residents in Japan, usually for two reasons: the price, and the fact that its payment options are wider than most people assume. Both of those are worth taking seriously. So is a third thing that gets much less attention, which is that two parts of the sign-up process changed in 2026 and one of them may force you into a shop.

This article covers the plan and its price with a date attached, the payment routes and their published limits, the identity check and where it breaks, the coverage situation as it actually stands rather than as rumour has it, and what the overseas roaming allowance really gives you when you go home to visit. Where the company has not published something, this article says so instead of filling the gap with a number from somewhere else.

Pricing, as of August 17, 2026

Those are the official prices as of August 17, 2026, and there are three things to understand about how the table works.

First, the price is flat within each band. You pay 1,078 yen for anything between zero and 3GB, and the bill steps up automatically when you cross a threshold. There is nothing to switch and nothing to opt into, which also means there is no way to be charged less than the bottom band in a month where you barely use the phone.

Second, the data-only plan type costs exactly the same as the plan with voice calling. Dropping the voice function does not reduce the price at all. On top of that, new applications for the data-only type have been suspended since 5 March 2026, and as of August 17, 2026 they had not reopened. For most readers this is not a loss: since the two types cost the same, being limited to the standard plan with voice included costs you nothing.

Third, tethering. Rakuten Mobile does not publish a data ceiling for tethering. Its terms do reserve the right to control speed or compress data in the interest of fair use between customers, but no threshold is stated anywhere. If you find a specific number of gigabytes quoted online as the point where you get throttled, that number did not come from Rakuten Mobile, and you should not plan around it.

Paying without a Japanese credit card

This is the question that decides whether the plan is available to you at all, and the answer is more generous than most people expect.

The published payment methods are:

• Credit card. The straightforward route if you have one.
• Rakuten Bank debit card, issued by Rakuten's own bank.
• Some debit cards issued by other companies. Rakuten Mobile states explicitly that acceptance depends on the decision of each card issuer. That means some work and some do not, and the only reliable way to find out about yours is to enter it and see.
• Automatic payment from a bank account, known as furikomi. The list of participating banks is long: Rakuten, MUFG, Mizuho, SMBC, Resona, Saitama Resona, Japan Post Bank, PayPay Bank, Sony Bank, the former Sumishin SBI online bank, Seven Bank, au Jibun Bank, AEON Bank, Shinsei Bank and a range of regional banks and shinkin credit unions. Corporate accounts cannot be used, only personal ones.

If you do not have any of these yet, the order matters more than the choice. Getting a bank account first widens your options considerably, and the conditions differ enough between banks that it is worth reading the bank account guide before you pick one.

Identity verification, and where the merged card breaks it

The normal online route uses the IC chip in your residence card. You hold the card against the back of your phone, the app reads the chip, and identity verification is done without going anywhere.

There is one case where that route is not available. The tokutei zairyu card, the version that merges the residence card and the My Number card into a single card, cannot be used with Rakuten Mobile's quick smartphone identity check. If that is the card you hold, you have to apply in a shop. There is no online workaround, and this is stated by the company rather than inferred.

This is not a Rakuten-specific quirk either. The same card has caused at least one online bank to suspend smartphone verification and IC chip reading for account opening and move to postal handling for the time being. If you hold the merged card, the sensible assumption across telecoms and banking is that in-person or postal routes are the ones that will work, and that everything takes a little longer. Plan the extra trip rather than discovering the problem at the last step of an online form.

One thing this article will not tell you is how many days it takes from application to a working line. Rakuten Mobile does not publish a standard figure, so any specific number you see elsewhere is somebody's guess.

Coverage, and the au roaming question

This is the part of the decision that deserves the most care, and it is also the part where the most confident-sounding information circulating online is wrong.

Start with the coverage figure. Rakuten Mobile publishes a population coverage figure of 99.9%. That figure is a combined value: it covers the Rakuten network area together with the domestic partner network area. The company does not publish a separate figure for its own network on its own. So the 99.9% is real, but it is not a statement about Rakuten's own infrastructure, and anyone quoting a standalone own-network percentage is using a number the company has never released.

Now the agreement itself. KDDI's official position is that it provides au network roaming from 1 October 2019 until 30 September 2026, and that any further extension will be decided through discussion between the two companies. At KDDI's earnings briefing on 7 August 2026 the position given was that roaming would basically end at the end of September, with the possibility of some continuation in outlying areas. At Rakuten's earnings briefing on 10 August 2026 the framing was that roaming ends in the areas Rakuten has covered with its own network.

Then, on 12 August 2026, Rakuten's chief executive Hiroshi Mikitani stated publicly on X that in areas where Rakuten Mobile requires more time to achieve coverage, roaming will continue after October, while in areas where Rakuten Mobile has achieved sufficient coverage, roaming will be scaled back.

Read those together and the conclusion is narrow but clear. 30 September 2026 is the stated contractual end date, but this is not a single nationwide switch-off. The company itself has said the outcome differs by area. And because the formal decision has not been announced, the only sensible instruction is the boring one: check the current area map for the places you actually spend time, and check the latest announcements, before you sign a contract. Not the map as it was when this article was written, and not the map for the city centre if you live in the suburbs. Your home address and your workplace address.

Overseas roaming: 2GB a month, 107 countries and regions

This is the feature that matters most to readers who travel home, and it is genuinely useful, with one condition that people miss.

Rakuten Mobile includes 2GB of data per month at no additional charge while roaming, across 107 countries and regions. Once you exceed the 2GB, the connection continues at a maximum of 128kbps rather than stopping, which is enough for messaging in most cases and not enough for much else.

The condition: that 2GB is counted towards your monthly data allowance, not granted on top of it. If you use 1GB in Japan and 2GB abroad in the same month, you have used 3GB, and your bill moves accordingly. It is best understood as "your data works abroad too, up to 2GB", rather than as a separate travel bundle.

Two practical points. First, check whether your destination is on the official list of 107 countries and regions before you rely on it. The list is published and it is specific. Second, if you are going home for a longer stay, 2GB is not a substitute for a local SIM, and it is worth deciding in advance which one you are relying on.

Language support

According to reporting by Keitai Watch, the official Rakuten Mobile website has supported seven languages since May 2025, Vietnamese among them, and the company has placed Pocketalk translation devices in 162 shops nationwide and provides contract documents in seven languages. We flag the source because this came through media reporting rather than a company page, and because the specific set of seven languages is what determines whether it helps you personally. If in-shop language support is going to be the deciding factor for you, confirm which languages are covered at the shop you plan to visit before you travel to it.

Who this suits, and who should think twice

It suits you if your data use is uneven month to month, since the tiered price adjusts automatically and a quiet month genuinely costs less. It suits you if you do not have a Japanese credit card, because the published payment routes are wider than most carriers. And it suits you if you travel home regularly and want data to keep working on arrival without buying anything.

Think twice if coverage where you live is the deciding factor. The roaming situation is in flux, the outcome is area-dependent, and the honest advice is to verify your own address on the map rather than trusting a general statement about the country. Think twice as well if you hold a tokutei zairyu card and cannot easily get to a shop, since that is currently the only route available to you.

If you need something working immediately and the phone contract is going to take time, a no-installation router is the usual stopgap, and the WiFi comparison covers which providers accept which payment methods. And if you are still working out the order of everything else, the setup sequence article is the place to start. Once the line and the account exist, sending money home becomes the next thing worth getting right, and the wider first-month list lives in the moving to Japan checklist.

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