To fight against credit card scams, the Japanese authorities are studying the possibility of withdrawing them from people over 65 years of age. The condition would be not to have used it for at least a year.
In Japan, the authorities no longer seem to know how to fight credit card scams. The elderly are particularly affected and in the first 6 months of 2023 only, about 100 million euros were taken from them by scammers. In general, they pretend to be bank employees on the phone and explain to the victim that their account is overdrawn. She then makes a transfer to cover it and the money ends up in the pocket of the thieves.
Another trick is to pretend to be a relative, claiming a car accident and then an urgent need for money to pay the other driver and avoid legal proceedings. Unprepared for this kind of tricks, the Japanese of a certain age fall easily into the trap. To curb the phenomenon, the Japanese National Police Agency purely and simply proposes to withdraw the bank card for people over 65.
Japanese people over 65 would no longer be allowed to have a bank card
To have your credit card taken away, age is not the only condition. It must also not have been used for at least 12 months in a row.. In other words, Japan would like limit the measure to people who barely use their card. That doesn’t stop some people from worrying. Tomoko Oono, a retiree living in northern Tokyo, takes the example of her mother. “[Elle] still lives alone, and she uses cash all the time because she is not able to shop online”. Without a bank card, she would no longer be able to withdraw money.
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Tomoko Oono is also thinking about people in rural areas of Japan who don’t have a bank nearby. If they are deprived of the possibility of withdrawing from an ATM, they risk finding themselves in difficulty. Technical solutions are well under development, such as a 100% secure biometric card or payment using the palm of one’s hand, but the main problem will always remain the educating seniors about credit card scams.
Source: South China Morning Post