How to early repay Rakuten Card credit card

If you have a Rakuten Card credit card (楽天カード) in Japan, you may want to make an early repayment of the card balance to recover the credit limit.

In general, the steps are to first notify Rakuten that we wish to make an early repayment, where the repayment details will be given. Then we transfer funds according to the repament details provided. I highly recommend to try repaying a small bill first just to make sure you’ve got all the steps right.

There are two methods for those who don’t speak much Japanese to make the early repayment notification. If you speak only English and don’t mind speaking to the call center, follow the guide from Rakuten here. If you do speak some Japanese (or is able to record the call to translate afterwards), there is another fully automated method that doesn’t involve speaking to a customer service officer.

Disclaimer: all the steps below are done at your own risk. If you have questions or is not comfortable at any point, do not continue the transfer and call up customer support. You can reach Rakuten card in English following this article.

Automated Early Repayment

Rakuten has an FAQ page about this method. The article stops short on explaining what the automated call looks like (which we’ll explain below) but contains general information on early repayment timeline and a note on partial repayments, so I recommend reading that first.

Eligibility for early repayment using this method

An early repayment using this method can only be done a certain period of the month, from after the bill amount is confirmed to 2:45pm of the 9th of the following month 引き落とし結果反映後～翌月9日（土日祝の場合は前営業日）14:45まで. In practice this usually means from around the end of the month to the 9th of the following month.

To do early repayment outside of this period, use other methods from the FAQ page.

Make a repayment notification

Before we start, you’ll need to have ready the credit card number, your date of birth, the outstanding bill amount, and somewhere to jot down the payment details.

To start, call Rakuten automated service hotline. The number can be found behind the card (labelled 自動音声専用 ２４時間 フリーダイヤル), or in the FAQ page above (labelled 電話番号). At pixel time the number to dial is 0120–30–6910.

Wait for the automated voice to get to the options selection. Input #2100 to skip to the early repayment option.

The voice will prompt for the credit card number. Input the 16 digits and then hit #.

The voice now asks for the date of birth. Input it in YYYYMMDD format and then hit #. For example, a birth date of 2023 Aug 17 will be 20230817#.

At this point, if it is not eligible to make an early repayment (see “Eligibility for early repayment using this method” section), the voice will mention that and end the call.

The voice asks whether you wish to make the repayment within this billing cycle. Hit 1.

Next is a long section that ends with the voice asking for the date of transfer in MMDD. Input the date today (or tomorrow if the transfer reaches them tomorrow) then hit #. For example, if the date of transfer is Sep 23, enter 0923#.

The next part is important to remember so I’d recommend jotting it down or recording. Don’t worry if you miss it the first time, there is an option later to repeat this part. The voice will rattle off the details of the payment account that you should transfer to. The payment details are unique to you and will be presented in this sequence:

1. The repayment amount, this is recited in prose and not as a sequence of numbers. For example, ¥124270 will be read as juu-ni-man yon-sen ni-hyaku nana-ju en. This should correspond to your outstanding bill amount, so you could simply compare against that. This is repeated once.
2. The name of the bank. This should be 楽天銀行 rakuten ginkou “rakuten bank”.
3. The name of the branch. You can find a list of receiving-only branches in this page, under the 被振込専用支店 section, with their pronunciation in katakana. The most common branches looks like 法人第<number> houjin dai <number> “corporate number <number>”.
4. The account type. This should be 普通 futsuu which refers to the “savings” account type.
5. The recipient account number. This is read out as a sequence of numbers.
6. The recipient name. This should be 楽天カード株式会社 rakuten kaado kabushiki gaisha “rakuten card corp”.

Next comes the option to repeat the payment details! Hit 3 to repeat or 1 to proceed.

That’s all with the call, now either hit 9 to end the process or hang up.

Note: after this, you’ll receive an email titled お電話によるご利用残高一括（全額）お支払いの受付について【楽天カード株式会社】 to inform that a repayment notification has been requested (ie, what we did above was successful).

Transfer funds

Make a transfer following the repayment details earlier. The sender name should be the same as the cardholder name, and the amount should match exactly.

The card balance and credit limit should be updated after 1–2 business days.

For the next early repayment, repeat the whole process again as the repayment details could change.

You might be looking for:

• How to early repay SMBC credit card
• How to early repay Paypay Card credit card

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