Free bank to bank transfers with AirWallet

Japanese banks don’t generally charge fees simply for maintaining an account, and they also don’t typically require a minimum balance or charge fees for things like failed debits, etc. Whet they do charge fees for are things like furikomi transfers and ATM withdrawals.

Typically, these may be free under certain conditions, but when making lot of transfers you will often end up paying fees.

Many banks have some sort of “rank” system where you can get more free transactions if you meet certain conditions – but if you use separate bank accounts for separate purposes then it may be difficult to meet these conditions.

For example, you might have a “Payroll Deposit” account, a savings account, and a “Spending account”, and a mortgage payment account. Your payroll deposit account may have a low average balance, your savings and mortgage accounts may have few transactions per month, and your spending account doesn’t have payroll deposit.

This means that you probably won’t quality for the highest rank at any of your banks, and therefore will have a limited number of free furikomi transfers.

What to do?
There are various methods to move money between accounts at different banks for free. Today we will discuss a solution called “AirWALLET”.
AirWallet is an app produced by MUFG and Recruit. Like many financial apps, it is not well defined in that it has multiple features which overlap with other products:

1. The main feature is the “Coin+” QR code payment method. You can charge your account from a normal bank account, and then pay via Coin+. In this way, they are trying to compete with PayPay, Yucho Pay, etc.
2. You can also generate a virtual debit card number, which you can use for online purchases. You can request a physical chip & PIN debit card be issued as well. It should be noted that this debit card does not support recurring payments, or shops such as hotels and gasoline stands where the value is not exactly computed ahead of time.
3. You can send money to friends & family, etc.
4. Withdraw funds back to a bank account.

How does AirWallet stack up to the competition?

• QR Code Payment – To be honest, the QR code payment feature is nowhere near as widely accepted as PayPay, so for QR Code payments, you are better off using PayPay in general.
• Prepaid Card – There are much better prepaid credit cards available which do handle things like recurring payments. For example, Kyash. Likewise, there are prepaid cards which support iD, such as dCard Prepaid.
• Sending Money – There are Plenty of ways to send money to friends and family, from PayPay to Kazoku no Saifu, and even normal furikomi. If it’s sending to random people we are talking about, then Furikomi and PayPay (for small amounts) are your best bet. Everyone has a bank account, and PayPay has a large market penetration. Something like Kazoku-no-Saifu or OneBank’s “Pair” account are ideal for family members.
• Withdrawing funds – This is the best feature. AirWallet supports a large number of banks for both charging and withdrawel. For example, PayPay Bank, Docomo SMTB Bank, Rakuten Bank (Including JRE bank), and more. Sony bank is notably absent at the moment, but Yucho (JP Post) and the mega-banks are all present as well as most of the major net banks.
  Why is this an important? Because both charging and withdrawel are currently free in all cases with AirWallet. This means that you can transfer money from one bank account in two steps:

1. Charge – Choose an account and select charge.
2. Withdraw – Choose a different account and select withdraw.
   The charge step is basically instant, and depending on circumstances, the withdraw step can be instant as well.
   This means that if you have a number of transfers that need to be made each month and you often go over your free limit, you can reorganize things so that transfers between your own account are done for free via AirWallet, and save your free furikomi transfers for external transfers to your landlord, etc.
   Is charging money only to immediately withdraw it considered abuse? No, in fact AirWallet is advertising this as a feature, not an unintended side effect.

Before:
Furikomi:

1. Transfer Payroll Account -> Spending Account
2. Transfer Payroll Account -> Mortgage Account
3. Transfer Payroll Account -> Credit Card debit Account
4. Transfer Payroll Account -> Savings Account
5. Transfer Payroll Account -> Other External Transfer

After:
Furikomi:
2. Transfer Payroll Account -> Mortgage Account
3. Transfer Payroll Account -> Other External Transfer
AirWallet:
4. Charge from Payroll Account
5. Withdraw to Spending Account
6. Withdraw to Credit Card debit Account
7. Withdraw to Savings Account

From this, we have reduced the use of Furikomi from 5 times to only 2. This is enough to (for example) fit within the 3 free transfers given by PayPay bank for having your payroll deposited there.

There are other free transfer methods:

Method	Pros	Cons
Furikomi Transfer	Fast, Standard, can be scheduled*1	Not always Free
Scheduled Debit*2	Free	Slow and inflexible
Furikae Transfer	Fast, Free	Only within same bank
AirWallet	Fast, Free	Manual, Doesn’t Support all Banks

*1 Furikomi transfers can be scheduled to run automatically with some banks, f.e. PayPay Bank, Rakuten Bank, and Docomo SMTB Net Bank.
*2 “Scheduled Debit” is the name I am using for “定期自動入金サービス” (from PayPay bank) and similar schemes form other banks, including Docomo SMTB Net Bank. Typically a monthly schedule must be set up according to the bank’s option (f.e. 5th or 27th of the month), and the money is unavailable for at least four business days. au Jubun Bank and Aeon bank also have a similar service.

Now, you might ask “PayPay also lets you charge and withdraw money, can’t you do the same thing?” Well, yes… and no.

Account Type	Charge from Bank Account	Withdraw to Bank Account
PayPay	Free	145 JPY*1
Mercari Pay	Free	200 JPY
AirWallet	Free	Free

*1 PayPay withdrawals to PayPay bank are free. Withdrawals to SMBC bank are free up to 5 times per month. Otherwise, withdrawals cost 145 JPY.