Accepting au PAY as a merchant
au PAY is the smartphone wallet of KDDI, the Japanese telecommunications company behind the au brand. The au PAY site describes it as a QR payment service for convenience stores, cafés and other shops across Japan, and shoppers collect and spend Ponta points with it. The shopper pays from an au PAY balance, topped up from cash, a bank account, a credit card or Ponta points. For a merchant in Europe it is a cross-border online method: you sell to shoppers in Japan, the payment is processed in yen, and a PSP carries it to you. The point that needs attention is that every limit on the method is set in yen, while your prices and your checkout rules are set in euros.
Published prices for au PAYPer provider, country and channel, further down this pageGo to the pricesHow to accept au PAY as a merchant
For a merchant established in Europe the route is a PSP that carries au PAY cross-border. Antom lists the EEA and the United Kingdom among the merchant entity locations for au PAY, with AntomEU and AntomUK among its acquiring entities. It processes the payment in yen, and its au PAY page names no settlement currency.
Antom also narrows the integration. au PAY runs as a one-time payment through the API only; the hosted and embedded checkout pages, payment links, tokenised payments and subscriptions are not supported. Plan the build as a direct API integration with a redirect to the wallet, and agree in writing the currency you are paid in, because that decides who converts the yen and at what rate.
Wallet
au PAY is a stored balance, not a card rail
An au PAY payment is paid from the shopper's au PAY balance. Antom states that shoppers top that balance up from cash, bank accounts, credit cards and Ponta points, and that Ponta points can offset a payment directly at one point to one yen. Online the shopper is redirected to au PAY, confirms the payment there, and Antom returns the result in real time.
Antom marks full and partial refunds as supported and chargebacks and disputes as not supported. No issuer dispute cycle sits behind an au PAY payment, and the refund you initiate is the only way money goes back to the shopper. Conversion work on this method therefore sits in the redirect and in the limits set out below.
Where au PAY is used, and why it is an online method for you
The au PAY site describes the service as usable at convenience stores, cafés and other shops across Japan, and the index lists Japan as its only shopper country. In the shop it is a QR payment. Online a European merchant offers it to shoppers in Japan, with the amount processed in yen.
Outside Japan, KDDI and au Payment started overseas use of au PAY code payments in South Korea on 10 March 2026, at merchants of the Korean code payment operator paybooc, with an overseas payment fee of 3.85% included in the amount the shopper pays. The announcement names no European country. For a European merchant au PAY is therefore an online method.
Pricing
Neither KDDI nor the PSPs in the index publish a rate
KDDI publishes no merchant rate for cross-border acceptance of au PAY, and the index holds no published rate for au PAY from Antom or AirPAY. The price is whatever your PSP quotes, and the quote can carry more than a percentage: a fixed fee per transaction, and the conversion from yen into the currency you are paid in.
As an illustration, take 500,000 euro of Japanese volume at an average order of 150 euro, which is about 3,333 orders a year. Every half percentage point on the rate is then 2,500 euro a year, and a fixed fee of 0.30 euro per transaction adds about 1,000 euro.
These figures are illustrative and do not come from a published price list; the quoted rate decides what you actually pay. With no list price to measure against, the comparison that counts is what you pay for Japanese cards on the same orders. Ask for the rate, the fixed fee and the conversion terms in writing, and set them side by side.
Limits
The limits are fixed in yen, so the euro ceiling moves
Antom documents three limits for au PAY: 300,000 yen per transaction, 500,000 yen per day and 2,000,000 yen per month, with a minimum of 1 yen. They are set in yen. Your prices are set in euros, so the largest basket au PAY can carry, measured in euros, changes every day with the exchange rate.
At an illustrative rate of 170 yen to the euro, 300,000 yen is about 1,765 euro. At 160 yen it is 1,875 euro. A basket of 1,800 euro, which is 306,000 yen at the first rate and 288,000 yen at the second, fails in one month and goes through in the next, with nothing changed in your checkout.
A payment above the limit cannot be completed with au PAY. If you sell baskets near the limit, show au PAY only below a threshold recalculated in yen from the current rate rather than below a fixed euro amount, and report abandoned au PAY payments by basket value.
Contract
One-time and API-only: get the scope of the route in writing
Antom's au PAY page lists one-time payments through the API only, and marks tokenised payments and subscriptions as not supported. The shopper's au PAY cannot be stored for a later charge, so on this route au PAY cannot carry a subscription or a renewal charged without the shopper present.
For a merchant that sells subscriptions or replenishment to Japanese shoppers, that decides where au PAY may appear: on the first order and on one-off purchases, not as a stored payment method. Have your PSP confirm in writing which modes it supports for au PAY under your contract, and how a renewal is collected from a shopper who signed up with it.
Refunds close after 90 days, and a return from Japan uses part of them
Antom gives a refund period of 90 days for au PAY, with full and partial refunds supported. Within that window you refund to the wallet. After it, the route back to the wallet is closed, and because the method has no chargeback the shopper has no route of their own either.
If the 90 days run from the payment, they cover the delivery to Japan, the shopper's return period, the parcel's journey back to your warehouse and your inspection. A generous return policy, a warranty claim or a slow return parcel can run past the window. Set your longest refund case against 90 days before you switch the method on, ask your PSP from which date the period runs, and decide in advance how you refund after it, for example by bank transfer to a Japanese account, with its own cost.
Which payment providers support au PAY
In the index, AirPAY (Recruit) and Antom (Ant International) offer au PAY. Antom carries it cross-border, for merchants established in the EEA and the United Kingdom among other locations. AirPAY is Recruit's in-store payment service in Japan; it runs on an iPad or iPhone and pays out to Japanese bank accounts, which makes it relevant to a merchant with shops in Japan.
The questions to put to each are the same: the quoted rate and any fixed fee, the settlement currency and conversion terms, how the yen limits are handled in your checkout, which integration modes are supported, and from which date the refund period runs.
Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index
Published prices for au PAY, per provider
One provider in the index offers au PAY to merchants established in Europe, and it publishes no price.
Each rate is shown as the provider prints it, and the provider's name links to the page it was read on. A published rate is a list rate: what a merchant actually pays is stated in the quoted rate and the contract.
The country where your business is established and from which you sell.
Includes the prices providers publish for merchants anywhere in the EU, marked EU-wide.
| Provider | Per transaction | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Antom (Ant International) Merchants anywhere in the EU | No price published | Online |
| Antom (Ant International) Merchants in the United Kingdom | No price published | Online |
| Antom (Ant International) Merchants in Norway | No price published | Online |
Source: EcomStream, Retail Payment Methods Transparency Index, ecomstream.eu/payment-methods-transparency-index. Read at source between 22 September 2026 and 22 September 2026. A provider that believes a row is wrong can write to index@ecomstream.nl. Every reported correction is checked at the source.
Reviewing what au PAY costs you
What you pay for au PAY is set in your agreement with your PSP, not by KDDI. Start by establishing whether you are overpaying your PSP, and where Japan is a material share of your volume, set the au PAY quote against what you pay for Japanese cards on the same orders.
Relevant markets: Japan
Payment set-up check
Selling to shoppers in Japan? Let's check what au PAY costs you through your PSP.
Enter your webshop. The check sets your checkout against what shoppers in each of your markets expect, and names the gaps. If you want, it then calculates what those gaps cost you in euros.
Ramon Helwegen
