JAL ticketing installment payments.....
 

Not that I'm the slightest bit interested in terms of taking up the offer, but I was somewhat astonished to see that if you procure your JL tickets direct on their website, and pay for it on your AMEX or NICOS (?) card, you may pay for it in 3,6,9 or 12 installments !!

Is it forward thinking or a Japanese market culture thing ?

Not something I've ever seen before !

I think AMEX have offered this for years. The airline gets its money up front from AMEX who loan the money to the purchaser. This is an AMEX deal, not JAL.

No different, rwally, from usin your mastercard or Visa to buy a ticket and then paying the minimum amount every month.

That may well be, but you don't exactly see it elsewhere....

As I recall, the traditional AMEX card isn't a credit card. They expect payment in full. But to appease customers who didn't wish to pay for large purchases in full they have this facility to pay installments. This also allows them to make buckets of money as this facility comes at a cost.

The old universal paper charge card forms had a box where one could choose this scheme, but was only valid for AMEX (and possibly Diners?).

Nothing new under the sun ...

AmEx were, and still are, a Charge card company but they introduced Credit cards in the late 1990s. Some are their own and others are in conjunction with others. The BA Exec Club AmEx for example, is a credit card and many other carriers have them too. They usually give more FFMs to ease the cost of credit.

Credit cards weren't allowed for a long time in Japan, although charge cards were. So the burden was shifted to the seller: the seller would bill the charge card in increments. This is still quite normal in Japan: when you rock up to the till, they will ask you whether you want a single payment, or multiple payments. There's some mysterious breakpoint above two payments.


NiCOS is the cretins at MUFJ, and operate Amex in Japan.