Japan will enable those with My Number ID cards to use them in place of health insurance certificates, and will give shopping points worth ¥5,000 to My Number cardholders who make payments via smartphones, in measures unveiled Tuesday to shore up popularity of the card.
Launched in 2016, the My Number system allocated all residents a 12-digit ID number. But by the end of last month, only 13.9 percent had converted the paper slip notifying them of their number into a physical card.
From March 2021, some 60 percent of medical institutions will start to accept the cards in place of health insurance certificates. By March 2023 almost all such facilities will accept them, and approximately 220,000 hospitals and pharmacies in total will receive subsidies to purchase card readers and update computer systems.