The tax free QR code in Japan is a two-dimensional code in the Visit Japan Web app that carries your passport information, and Japan’s National Tax Agency accepts it in place of handing over the passport itself at a tax-free till. That is the whole of it.
It is not a refund. It is not an airport procedure. It does not raise the amount you get back, lower the ¥5,000 floor, extend the 90-day window or remove a single step at departure. On a ¥110,000 purchase the consumption tax is ¥10,000 whether the shop reads a code or a passport page.
What it saves is the passport coming out of your bag at a till — which is worth something on a long shopping day, and is worth nothing at all if the till in front of you cannot read it and the passport is back at the hotel.
What the tax free QR code in Japan actually is
The Tax Agency’s own rule is the clearest statement available. A tax-free shop must take presentation of the buyer’s passport and receive the information recorded in it; without that presentation the shop cannot carry out the tax-free procedure. A footnote to that rule says presentation includes presentation of a Visit Japan Web two-dimensional code in which the passport information is recorded.
So in law the code is not a substitute for a passport. It is one of the ways a passport is presented. The distinction matters at the two points below where the code stops working.
Who the procedure is open to is unchanged by the reform and unaffected by the code: a non-resident holding temporary visitor, diplomatic or official status, or certain landing permissions; and a Japanese national who is non-resident and has lived abroad continuously for two years or more.
The chain, link by link
Japan’s tax-free procedure has been fully electronic since the Japan Tourism Agency took the paper purchase record out of it on 1 October 2021. What a reader is actually standing inside is a four-link chain, and only the first link is the code:
- You present the passport, or the code carrying its data. The shop reads it.
- The shop confirms you are eligible from what it read.
- The shop transmits the purchase record — your passport data and the fact of the purchase — to the Tax Agency’s tax-free sales management system, without delay, over the network. There is no paper, nothing stapled into the passport, and nothing for you to carry.
- Customs confirms, at departure, that the goods left. Under the system running to 31 October 2026 this is a check against what the shop transmitted; from 1 November it is the step that releases the money at all.
The thing most travellers remember — a form folded into the passport, surrendered at a counter — has not been how Japan works for five years. There is nothing in your hands to lose, which is the genuine advantage of the Japanese system over the bordereau, the PABLO kiosk and the €100 minimum or the Ausfuhrbescheinigung and the customs desk, where a missing stamp on a piece of paper ends the claim.
What changes on 1 November 2026, and what does not
The code survives the reform unchanged. One thing next to it does not.
From 1 November the identifier written into the purchase record is unified on the passport number. Under the current rules a traveller admitted on a landing permission — shore pass, crew, transit, emergency or distress landing — could be recorded by the permit number. From November the permit number is not accepted: those travellers must present both the landing permit and the passport, and the passport number is what goes into the record.
For anyone travelling on an ordinary temporary-visitor stamp, nothing about the shop-side step changes. What changes is everything after it — the tax is now paid at the register and claimed back after departure, which is pay the tax, claim it at departure.
Where the code does not work
Three places, and the third is the one worth planning around.
At the customs counter on departure. The departure step requires the buyer to present the passport at the point of exit and to be able to show the goods on request. The Tax Agency describes that as presenting the passport; the code’s accepted use is the shop-side procedure. Carry the document.
At a till that cannot read it. Acceptance in law is not coverage in practice, and I have no published figure for how many Japanese registers read the code today. A reader planning a large purchase should assume the passport may be asked for.
As identification for anything else. It carries passport data for a tax-free sale. It is not a travel document, not a residence card and not proof of status at a bank, a hotel or an immigration desk.
There is a fourth gap, and it is the one the search results are already filling in ahead of the facts. There is no confirmed departure-side code. The Tax Agency’s Q&A states that mechanisms for completing the departure procedure online inside airport wireless-LAN areas, and at automatic check-in machines, are under consideration by the relevant ministries, with details to be announced on its website once settled. Pages naming the airports where this will work, and describing the app flow, are describing something that was not published when the agency last wrote about it. Treat an airport procedure as a counter until the agency says otherwise, and build the time in — the step has to happen before you check your bags.
Should you set it up?
Yes, with the expectations above: it costs a few minutes before the trip, it removes the passport from the till transaction, and it changes no figure in the sum.
| What it does | What it does not |
|---|---|
| Presents passport data at a tax-free shop | Pay, process or increase a refund |
| Saves taking the passport out at the register | Lower the ¥5,000 floor or extend the 90-day window |
| Travels with your phone | Replace the passport at customs on departure |
| Works at shops whose terminals read it | Oblige a shop to have one that does |
The threshold, stated plainly. If the trip includes one large purchase, set the code up and still carry the passport — the code saves a pocket, not a document. If the trip includes none, it is not worth an evening of app registration for the ¥500 of tax inside a ¥5,500 receipt.
How Japan’s chain compares with the desks that still run on paper and stamps is in what each country's desk requires; what the chain is carrying until the end of this month is the system that is ending.
That a tax-free shop must receive presentation of the buyer’s passport and the information recorded in it, that presentation includes a Visit Japan Web two-dimensional code recording passport information, that the identifier set in the purchase record is unified on the passport number from 1 November 2026 with landing-permit numbers no longer accepted and both the landing permit and the passport required, the eligibility conditions including the two-year test for Japanese nationals and the statement that they are unchanged by the reform, the obligation on the shop to provide the purchase record to the National Tax Agency’s tax-free sales management system without delay, the departure requirement to present a passport and show the goods on request, and the relevant ministries’ continuing consideration of online procedures inside airport wireless-LAN areas and at automatic check-in machines with details to be announced, are as stated in the National Tax Agency’s Q&A on the move to the refund method (リファンド方式・概要編). Full electronic transmission of purchase records, replacing the paper purchase record, has applied since 1 October 2021, per the Japan Tourism Agency. Japan’s standard consumption tax rate of 10% is as published by the National Tax Agency. Checked 18 October 2026. Rules are jurisdictional and they change; this is reporting, not tax or legal advice.
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