Identity Verification in Japan: What Actually Happens Behind the Scenes

As long as everything works smoothly, nobody thinks about identity verification. But when you land in Japan and suddenly need to set up a bank account, a phone plan, and an apartment contract all at once, you might give it a second thought.

Almost every international resident shares a common story about an online process that was supposed to take five minutes turning into a two-week headache with paper forms and phone calls.

I ended up working with the onboarding team of a financial institution, getting a view on these challenges from the inside. Welcome to a world shaped by regulations, constant technology changes, AI threats, and mandatory background checks with law enforcement to make sure you’re not affiliated with organized crime!

In this article, I’ll walk you through what actually happens behind the screen when you submit your identity documents in Japan, and why running into friction along the way is practically inevitable.

The identity verification journey

I remember opening my first bank account with my parents back in France when I was younger. We walked into the branch after booking an appointment, and filled out all the paperwork by hand, identity check included.

This remains a common practice in many places, and it is actually how I opened my first bank account when I arrived in Japan in 2025. Fortunately my employer assisted me with the process and provided a clear list of documents to bring with me. Nowadays, however, most financial institutions are digital-first, allowing the entire account opening process to be completed online.

Whether for in-person or remote identity verification, the Japanese government has issued a set of rules and guidelines to ensure these operations are executed in a standardized and compliant manner. What needs to be done, how, and when, is all publicly available for any company required to implement it.

Depending on the organization, some will try to build identity verification in-house, while others will delegate it to specialized third-party providers. Most will end up using a mix of both.

Laws

Here is a simplified look at the main laws.

The Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds (APTCP)

This is the main identity regulation statue in Japan requiring regulated entities to verify your identity before opening an account. It is also the reason companies have to securely store your ID records for seven years.

The Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act

This one regulates how money moves across Japan’s borders. For actors dealing with cross-border remittances (like banks), this adds an extra layer of identity verification complexity, to ensure transactions comply with international asset-freezing programs, sanction lists, and outbound capital controls.

The Payment Services Act

This act primarily regulates the business operations of fintech actors and crypto-asset services. It binds those entities directly to the APTCP.

Offline, online, or a mix of both?

Either offline or online, you will always be asked to fill in your personal details—usually your full name, contact information, and address, at a minimum. Depending on the service, additional details may be requested, like your name in katakana (used by the Japanese banking network, Zengin, to perform name matching during money transfers), your employment status, or whether you work for a publicly-traded company.

Once your information is collected, your identity must be verified. To govern this process, regulators outline specific verification channels, which fall into three main buckets.

In person

As you’d expect, this requires meeting a representative face-to-face. The standard method involves presenting an official photo ID (such as a MyNumber Card or your Residence Card). But the full process doesn’t have to be completed in person. If the document presented lacks a photo ID, compliance typically requires following up by sending a non-forwardable letter to the registered address.

Remote

These methods allow applicants to complete onboarding remotely without attending an appointment. You probably had to use a method from this category if you opened an account from a bank website. Usually, the business will send you a letter with instructions to return a copy of your ID. They then validate the residence by sending a non-forwardable registered letter to the address listed on the ID. Less frequently, institutions use specialized postal delivery services where the mail carrier personally inspects the recipient’s ID upon delivery.

eKYC

This acronym stands for “electronic Know Your Customer” (eKYC). It’s similar to postal remote verification, but completely paperless.

The basics of eKYC identity verification

For each of these verification channels, there is a strict list of documents that can be used. I will mostly focus on eKYC identity verification, but the rest of the KYC journey is mostly applicable to the other method types as well.

The three main methods for eKYC verification in Japan, which you have experienced if you used a service online, are called Ho (ホ), He (ヘ ), and Wa (ワ). These are not actual names, but rather come from a well-known Japanese poem used for counting things in order.

• Ho: You send a picture of your ID (chosen from a specific list). The software must allow a human agent to verify ID authenticity, such as through card thickness capture. Selfie capture and liveness check must also be supported.
• He: Your information is extracted via the ID’s Near Field Communication (NFC) reading. The software must also capture your selfie.
• Wa: This is the newest method pushed by the government that uses Japanese Public Key Infrastructure (JPKI). It uses a private certificate from your MyNumber card that you unlock with your long password to identify you to a centralized government database. The service can then access all your updated data directly.

The central role of eKYC providers

While traditional in-person identity verification, or remote methods asking you to send your documents by mail, are handled directly by bank staff, digital onboarding is rarely built entirely in-house. Beyond strict regulatory requirements, financial institutions would need to create and maintain complex technical services. The compliance risk is critical, and any audit could result in regulators asking them to stop onboarding until the solution is up to their standards.

For most institutions, paying a per-verification fee to a vendor is far more cost-effective than pouring tens of millions of yen into internal solutions. In addition, data must be handled within Japan’s territory, which can be complex for international firms.

The main players

In Japan, the eKYC vendor market is covered by specialized players like TrustDock and LIQUID. These providers often integrate underlying security and digital certificate infrastructure from specialists such as Cybertrust. They are integrated via APIs or native SDKs embedded directly into a bank’s mobile app or web portal.

If you are redirected to a distinct interface while uploading your ID during an onboarding flow, chances are you are interacting with one of these vendor SDKs behind the scenes.

What an eKYC provider does

The exact scope delegated to an eKYC provider depends on each situation, but typically includes:

• For photo-based methods, handling the capture of the document’s front, back, and edge thickness, and providing real-time feedback to ensure image readability
• For chip-based methods, extracting data from the IC chip and guiding users through PIN entry when required
• Prompting the applicant to capture a selfie
• Performing active or passive liveness checks to confirm a human is completing the process, thereby preventing spoofing attempts via printed photos or deepfakes

However, these providers do far more than just collect raw data. Once the data is captured, they can either pass it directly to the client or manage the verification pipeline end-to-end. In a managed setup, they will:

• Extract data from document images
• Ensure image quality complies with regulatory requirements
• Confirm that identity documents are valid and unexpired
• Cross-reference extracted document details against the applicant’s self-reported form input
• Perform facial matching between the selfie/liveness capture and the ID photo

At the end of this pipeline, the provider can issue a result. While NFC-based verification enables instant approval, photo-based methods often rely on human verification which, depending on the service agreement, may only happen during standard business hours.

Pricing

Pricing for eKYC services typically factors in two variables.

• Verification method: Automated processes like NFC chip reading have a lower cost per transaction because extracted data does not require manual review. Photo-based submissions require human overview to verify image quality and extracted data.
• Additional services: Additional data verification or extracted information adds extra charges. For instance, extracting and validating an applicant’s Individual Number is charged as a separate add-on feature.

Depending on contract volume and vendor pricing models, unit costs generally range between 150–300 yen.

But vendors bill on a per-attempt basis! If an applicant’s submission fails, the user must resubmit a verification operation, triggering a new fee. For users who go through multiple attempts, customer acquisition costs can quickly multiply.

Duplicate account verification

In most cases, opening more than one account at the same place is prohibited. An automated check is performed during onboarding to ensure you are not already an existing customer. Personal data points are combined and cross-referenced against records of both active and closed accounts to generate a matching score.

For instance, a match on a full name alone does not necessarily mean you are the same person, so it may pass automated verification. However, if a duplicate is found matching both your name and phone number, you can be sure an agent will manually review your file before allowing you to proceed.

Today, facial recognition similarity checks are also commonly being used.

Anti-Social Forces (ASF) screening checks

Japan has a unique compliance requirement in this domain: Anti-Social Forces (ASF) screening. The yakuza, Japan’s iconic organized crime syndicates, might evoke images of men with full-body tattoos. While this cliche still exists, ASFs are strictly-defined legal entities whose registered members are heavily sanctioned and automatically categorized as high-risk.

Most financial services are legally required to screen applicants and prevent individuals or entities linked to criminal activity from opening accounts. They integrate with screening providers that maintain databases containing tens of millions of risk profiles.

The matching logic works much like a duplicate account check, but due to the number of profiles and the lack of standardization across them, primarily name and date of birth are used. If a potential match is identified, the application is either blocked or flagged for rapid manual review.

Institutions can query local police registries directly to verify whether an individual belongs to a syndicate. Third-party organizations, like the Anti-Organized Crime Campaign Center/Boutsui Center (暴力追放運動推進センター, bouryoku tsuihou undou suishin senta-), also share updated lists. When opening an account in Japan, your information will be screened against those—not because you are suspicious or a suspected criminal, but because it is a standard practice for citizens and non-citizens alike.

Beyond ASF screening, Japanese financial institutions maintain a vigilant stance against entities and transactions related to North Korea. Any potential link within a profile trying to open an account (or during usage later on) will trigger manual review and compliance checks.

If you manage to pass all the above, congratulations! Your account is now open.

MyNumber verification

On top of verifying your identity, you might be asked to verify your Individual Number. It happened to me while I was trying to send money overseas with my Japanese account.

As a resident in Japan, you have an Individual Number, and may have the plastic MyNumber card. It contains the most important and personal information assigned to you: your unique Individual Number. This is highly sensitive, and the government strictly regulates how and why it can be collected.

The laws

Two main laws are used in this context regarding bank accounts:

• The Act on Submission of Statement of Overseas Wire Transfers for Purpose of Securing Proper Domestic Taxation: This says that your Individual Number can only be requested for international transactions. For purely domestic use, it shouldn’t be collected. However, many banks now add clauses stating that your account may be used for international wire transfers and that you acknowledge this functionality, which justifies collecting it upon account opening. Depending on the bank, other operations might require it as well.
• Act on the Use of Numbers to Identify a Specific Individual in Administrative Procedures: This second act ensures the bank explains to you why they are collecting it.

Verification methods

There are several ways to verify this number. The most common ones involve the physical MyNumber card. This can be done either via the NFC chip (method He described earlier), which requires the owner of the card to enter the four-digit PIN, or via a photo of the card alongside a selfie (method Ho), where the number will be manually extracted by an agent.

The personnel who have access to this number are normally strictly regulated, which can become an issue if part of the verification team is located outside of Japan. Also, for those who have to mail a paper form to complete an account opening, the photocopy of the document containing the Individual Number often requires a masking sticker, both to prevent the number from being visible through the envelope and to ensure it is only seen by authorized staff.

The MyNumber card is not the only option, however. This number can also be printed on your Certificate of Residence (住民票, juuminhyou). You will have to provide this document alongside another one containing your photo ID.

What could possibly go wrong?

The devil is in the details. Throughout the verification process, many small things can deviate from the ideal scenario and cause friction along the way. When this happens, the verification will usually require either a manual review by an agent, leading to a longer processing time, or the submission of additional documents on your end.

Most of these issues actually start from the manual verification of documents/information entered by users. With automated methods (He and JPKI), the occurrence of these problems is minimized.

The primary cause of failure is the photo quality of the identity documents. A glare on the card or partial obstruction of information results in an automatic rejection of the identity check.

Issues extracting information from documents are also common. With photo or photocopy-based methods, data is extracted through a combination of OCR technology and manual human review. Given the high volumes to process, mistakes can happen on their side.

The extracted information must strictly match the details entered by the user. Input error on your end or theirs will cause the verification to fail. If you are asked for two documents at the same time, the information on both must strictly align, in addition to matching the details you declared.

A common mistake is user error at some point: swapping the first and last names. Most services will accept the verification, despite this error, and either fix it on their end or keep it as is. Others, though, will reject the application.

Funny personal story—they switched my first and last name when I registered my dPoint account. Because of that, all automatic name-matching verification fails when I try to associate this account to another service. For instance, I never managed to link my broker to my dPoint account.

Also, specifically with NFC verification methods, you are required to enter your PIN to unlock the NFC chip. Remember the 4–16 character code you had to register when creating your ID? Well, it seems a lot of people actually forget it, and it is one of the main causes of drop-off in identity verification for these methods.

As a foreigner, you are playing on hard mode

So far I’ve intentionally left out every issue specific to international residents in Japan. Believe me, the list of things that can go wrong for us is quite long. You might not need to take my word for it and have experienced some of these already!

Proving Japanese residency

The first hurdle is proving Japanese residency. In accordance with the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, holding a bank account as a resident is subject to fulfilling at least one of these conditions:

• Being employed at an office in Japan
• Having been a resident in the country for more than six months

It is left to the discretion of each provider to define their own rules to enforce these directives, with some having higher risk aversion than others. The most frequently checked criteria are:

• The permission date from your Residence Card. If it was issued more than six months ago, you automatically meet the second condition.
• Your visa type, particularly if you’ve been here less than six months but want to open an account upon arrival to receive your salary.

Residence statuses like Temporary Visitor are usually rejected immediately. Statuses like Student, who in principle cannot work full time, may also be denied. For visas that inherently require employment, like Engineer/Specialist in Humanities/International Services, this may be ok without additional checks. However, for many visas where working for a Japanese entity isn’t automatically implied by the status itself (such as Designated Activities, Artist, or Instructor), additional documentation will be requested. Most of the time, a Certificate of Employment (在籍証明書, zaiseki shoumeisho) from your company should do the trick.

Unfortunately, there are cases where even if you legitimately work at an office in Japan, you might not be able to procure a Certificate of Employment—for instance, individuals on a Business Manager or Researcher visa. In such cases, you will likely have to wait until you have been in the country for more than six months.

Your name (in general)

Another common problem is your name itself. Do you have middle names, a maiden name, or a particularly long name? Good luck!

Especially on paper forms, you are asked to write your name character-by-character in dedicated boxes, and that’s where you sometimes hit low character limits. I’ve personally seen as few as 20 boxes. For a name in Chinese characters, this is no problem. For alphabetical names or names with long strings of katakana, it is sometimes impossible to fit everything.

You might think: “I’ll just enter my first name and last name.” What a mistake! Remember how the information you declare must strictly match what’s printed on your identity documents? Save yourself trouble down the road and always enter your full name.

There is no universal solution to this issue: every institution handles it differently.

Your name (in katakana)

Then comes the issue of your name in katakana. One could write an entire article on this topic alone, which, by the way, doesn’t just affect international residents.

Upon arriving in Japan, you’ve had to write or enter your name in katakana multiple times. A central database now exists that registers the katakana names of Japanese citizens, though very few services are actually connected to it. This means you might have registered your katakana name one way with a bank, but with a different spelling for another one. An inconsistency between two of these often leads to a rejection, requiring you to manually resolve the mismatch.

The pronunciation of your name can also cause trouble. For international residents, services usually ask for your name alphabetically in addition to katakana, in the space where a Japanese resident would write kanji. To minimize fraud risks, automated cross-checks are run between the various spellings.

However, the number of possible combinations is massive. Especially with foreign names, where the phonetic structure differs from Japanese, automated matching often fails, triggering manual review. This also affects Japanese residents when matching kanji to alphabetical spellings, if requested by a foreign service.

A special case applies to international residents with names in Chinese characters, such as Chinese or Korean citizens. Their native readings will often differ from the Japanese reading, which almost systematically causes automated checks to fail.

Even if you pass now, trouble can pop up later

Your goal is to keep your identity verification valid. There are typically two scenarios that will trigger new verification checks.

A change in your situation

The first is a change in your personal situation, where you voluntarily inform the service. After moving, for instance, you are required to notify your bank as soon as possible. They will ask you for a new document proving your address. If you are using a NFC-based identity verification method, you will need to properly update your card, and the same applies to a name change following a marriage or divorce.

For foreign residents, if you change your residence status, you must also inform your bank and go through the procedures described earlier again. Depending on the institution, they might decide that this new status does not meet their acceptance criteria, forcing you to close the account.

Expiration

The second, more problematic scenario is the expiration of your documents or visa. Normally institutions are supposed to notify you in advance, typically two months prior, that the documents you previously submitted are about to expire, and ask you to provide updated ones. The same goes for your visa as it approaches its end date.

However, as you have probably experienced or heard, renewing certain documents in Japan can take longer than expected depending on where you submit your application. (Renewing your visa in Tokyo might be every international resident’s nightmare.) Even when applying three months in advance, the decision can take time to arrive.

While you can legally remain in Japan, since a grace period applies, some banks will immediately restrict access to your account. Waiting for the decision on whether you can continue living in Japan or not, all while being locked out of your bank account, is hardly an easy situation to be in.

My advice here is to try to renew your documents as fast as possible: do not wait for the expiration deadline. Having an international card can help as well, if you maintain an account opened in another country. As a last resort, before your documents expire, withdraw enough cash to manage for a month or two. Most of your bills, rent, or even taxes, can be paid via a cash deposit at a konbini, after all.

Current and upcoming changes in identify verification

If all these friction points weren’t enough, regulatory shifts add another layer of complexity. Changes have been coming this year, mainly driven by the government’s push to standardize identity verification through JPKI, alongside efforts to fight AI-driven fraud.

The phase-out

The main shift impacting every Japanese provider is the phase-out of verification methods based on photo uploads of identity documents (the Ho method). Starting April 2027, it will no longer be permitted for sensitive services. In short, all organizations using eKYC must upgrade their systems to support either NFC chip reading or direct integration with the government database.

The biggest headache involves handling international residents. While automated verification is well developed for Japanese citizens, the same cannot be said for foreign nationals.

As mentioned earlier, visa status verification is mandatory for non-citizens, and most providers currently ensure this requirement using a photo of the Residence Card. However, until now, this card alone couldn’t be used for KYC through NFC chip reading, because the chip only retained the initial address recorded at issuance; subsequent moves were never updated within the chip itself. This means most services require a photo instead.

New identity documents

Which brings us to the rollout of new identity documents in June 2026—and as someone working in the industry, I can confirm it’s giving us real headaches.

Updated card formatting

First, let’s address the updated Residence Card format. Beyond a new color scheme, printed details have been removed, notably the issue/permission date mentioned earlier, which is often required to prove Japanese residency. This data remains inside the chip, and address changes following a move should now be properly synced on the chip itself.

Since this rollout is mandatory for any newly-issued card, institutions are handling the transition relatively smoothly, especially given that the NFC reading logic remains virtually identical between versions. They only need to adapt their Residency Verification processes.

The new, combined cards

The second, more challenging change, is the introduction of a new combined card merging the current Residence Card and MyNumber Card, called the Specified Residence Card (特定在留カード, tokutei zairyuu ka-do).

In theory, it simplifies identity management into a single document containing both general identity details and visa information. In practice, it forces providers to build support for a brand-new document type from scratch, all while continuing to support separate MyNumber and Residence Cards, since adoption is optional.

If you switch to the combined card, you must surrender your old ones.

My insider advice is to hold off for now. Without diving into the details, I can foresee that many major actors won’t be ready until the end of the year.

Conclusion

A quick note before wrapping up: having not worked in identity verification in countries other than Japan, my points of comparison are somewhat limited. However, I think it’s safe to say that Japan has higher risk aversion than other jurisdictions and applies a stronger, centralized preventive policy, especially for non-permanent residents.

While my article may have highlighted the friction points one can encounter during identity verification, I have to admit that the process here is quite advanced compared to many other countries and is moving in the right direction. Centralizing verification through a shared database, moving toward NFC-only checks, modernizing ID documents, etc., will further streamline the process and reduce fraud.

Plus, given the gradual realization that services need to adapt to edge cases, I genuinely believe that in a few years, most of the issues mentioned here will be a thing of the past.