Paying Your Phone Bill with Rakuten Points: Payment Methods That Don't Work, and Limits to Know

Pay your phone bill with points.

Sounds great.

But some people can’t.

The ones who chose bank transfer.

Sign up without knowing this and you’ll go “huh?” later. You will.

This article goes through the point payment conditions as far as they are written on Rakuten Mobile’s official page (the Saikyo Plan page).

Let me say up front that this site uses Rakuten Mobile referral links. I write the conditions at the same temperature, good or bad.

The 30-second version

• The official page says “Pay in full with your saved points, and your phone bill stays 0 yen, always!”
• However, if you set bank transfer as your monthly payment method, you can’t use Rakuten Points
• You can use 1 to 30,000 points at a time (up to 500,000 points for Diamond members)
• If you apply without using a Rakuten ID, points are not awarded and can’t be used

Conditions written on the official page (facts)

Here are the official page’s footnotes, organized as they are.

“Always 0 yen” only applies while points keep accumulating. In a month when points run short, you pay the shortfall another way. This is an explanation based on how such systems generally work, not something stated individually on the official page.

Bank transfer or point payment: it’s a choice

This is the most important part.

You can sign up with Rakuten Mobile without a credit card. I covered that it supports debit cards and bank transfer in another article.

However, if you choose bank transfer, you can’t use point payment.

• Want to cut your phone bill with points → choose a payment method other than bank transfer
• Don’t have a credit card → you’ll need to choose something like bank transfer. In exchange, you can’t pay with points

Whether point payment is available when paying by debit card was not stated on the page I checked this time. Please confirm it in the official guidance before you sign up.

Watch the “Rakuten Mobile SPU” cap too

A Rakuten Mobile contract is part of the point multiplier (SPU) on Rakuten Ichiba. The official page’s footnotes say the following.

• Entry required
• The Rakuten Mobile SPU adds +4x (a total value combined with the 1x for Rakuten members)
• The monthly cap on points earned is 2,000 points
• The points awarded are limited-time points

“The multiplier is high” and “there is a monthly cap” are separate things. Shop beyond the cap and nothing more gets added.

Also, limited-time points have an expiration date. I write about how to manage them in the article on rules for using up limited-time points.

Whether limited-time points can be used to pay the phone bill was not clear from the page I checked this time. Please confirm it in the official guidance.

The order to think it through

1. Decide your payment method (credit card / debit card / bank transfer, etc.)
2. If you want to use point payment, check whether it works with that payment method
3. Create your Rakuten ID before applying (without an ID, points are neither awarded nor usable)
4. For how to earn points, the article on how Rakuten Pay is used and the Rakuten Points usage guide are also worth a look

The better a points deal looks, the more conditions come with it. Reading the footnotes before you sign up is the best saving.

Summary

• The official page says that if you pay in full with saved points, your phone bill is 0 yen
• If you set bank transfer, you can’t use Rakuten Points
• There is a cap on how much you can use at once. For a device paid in installments, points can be used only for the first payment
• If you apply without a Rakuten ID, points are neither awarded nor usable
• The SPU +4x has a cap of 2,000 points a month (entry required, limited-time points)

Source: the Rakuten Mobile official site (Saikyo Plan page). Content may change. Please check the latest official page before you sign up.

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This article contains machine translation. For official terms, please refer to the multilingual pages on the official Rakuten Mobile website.

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