Bitbank Brings Bitcoin Into the Credit Card Payment Loop

Japan's Bitbank just did something no other exchange in the country has pulled off before. Working with EPOS Card, the credit card unit...

Written by: Sophia Cruz • Tuesday, April 28, 2026 • 2 min read

• Last updated: Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Japan’s Bitbank just did something no other exchange in the country has pulled off before. Working with EPOS Card, the credit card unit of retail group Marui, the exchange launched a Visa card that lets users settle their monthly bill directly from Bitcoin held in their Bitbank account. It sounds simple, but no Japanese credit card has offered this before, and the mechanics are worth understanding.

The way it works is straightforward on the surface. When payment is due each month, users can choose to have the required amount of Bitcoin sold automatically at the prevailing rate and converted to yen to cover the bill. The alternative is a traditional bank account deduction, so it is opt-in rather than forced. That structure is important: it does not ask users to change how they think about spending, it just adds crypto as an available repayment rail at the back end.

Beyond the settlement feature, the card pays 0.5% cashback on monthly spending, with cardholders able to choose whether they want those rewards in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Aster. The rewards land directly in the Bitbank account. There is no annual fee, and new users get a small crypto welcome bonus with a short-term campaign offering a bit more for early sign-ups.

Bitbank’s executive behind the product described it as allowing users to not just hold crypto but actually use it in their daily financial lives, a distinction that matters in a country where crypto ownership has historically been concentrated in people who treat it as an investment and rarely touch it for anything else. The regulatory environment in Japan has also shifted meaningfully this year, with a flat 20% tax rate on crypto gains replacing the much higher miscellaneous income treatment that previously made frequent transactions painful.

One thing users will need to track: selling Bitcoin to cover a credit card bill is a taxable event under Japanese law, and the exchange has flagged that some cardholders may need to file accordingly.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR See More

Sophia Cruz

Financial Writer - Asian & European Desks

Sophia is an experienced writer, reporter and newsdesk member, mostly on the financial sectors. For the past 5 years Sophia has covered a wide variety of topics such as the financial markets, economics, technology, fin-tech and trading. Sophia has been a part of the FX Leaders team since 2017 and works on producing valuable content and information for traders of all levels of experience.