The Pokémon Company is going to use the Japanese government’s My Number system. Will it be super effective in stopping scalpers?

The Pokémon Card Game’s fanbase has always been a multi-faceted one. In addition to serious competitive players of the game, there are fans who are primarily interested in other branches of the Pokémon franchise, such as the video games or anime, but occasionally dip their toes into the card collecting pool, and there are also plenty of little kids who just like having cards with little pictures of cool and cute creatures on them.

But dominating the discourse on Pokémon cards these days is the fourth demographic of buyers: scalpers. It’s gotten to the point where unless you’re willing to put all other responsibilities on hold and be lined up at the store before it opens on the day that expansions go on sale or restocks come in, you can essentially forget about getting your hands on them anytime in the near future, because scalpers will have snatched them all up to try to flip on the secondhand market for jacked up prices.

As a result, genuine fans are getting squeezed out of the fun of new releases for the game, and the Pokémon Company is stepping up its efforts to counter scalping. The latest plan: requiring an official Japanese government identification card and digital confirmation in order to buy Pokémon cards.

There had been prior rumblings about the possibility of such an initiative, but on July 13 the Pokémon Card Game’s official Japanese website made it official, posting:

“Thank you for your love and support of the Pokémon Card Game. As part of our efforts to provide fair opportunities for all customers and safe, secure, and enjoyable services, we are currently proceeding with preparations to implement an identification system that uses the My Number Card…This identification system will make use of the Digital Agency’s Digital Identification App.”

The new system is scheduled to be in place starting next month for select items sold through the Pokémon Center online store.

The Digital Identification App is a smartphone app created and distributed by the Digital Agency, a Japanese government organization under the jurisdiction of the prime minister’s cabinet. The app works in tandem with the My Number Card, a government-issued ID card that was established in 2016. After downloading and installing the app, users scan their My Number Card using their phone’s camera, and once registration is complete the app can be used for identification or electronic signing purposes.

So how is this supposed to prevent Pokémon card scalping? One possible way is by making it easier to detect when a single buyer is making suspiciously large bulk purchases. Ostensibly, this could also be done through registration of names, shipping addresses, or credit card numbers. False names aren’t hard to use with online orders, though. Shipping to offices or other multi-resident building addresses can make it difficult to restrict sales by address, and blocks on bulk or repeat purchases from the same credit card can be easily bypassed by scalpers using multiple credit cards. With the My Number Card being a unique personal number, though, there’s no way for an individual to fake theirs or acquire an alternate without roping another person into their scheme.

However, requiring the use of the Digital Identification App/My Number Card may shut out non-scalpers as well. For starters, My Number Cards are issued only to residents of Japan (both natives and foreign residents), so this new system immediately takes non-resident shoppers, including legitimate foreign tourists in Japan, out of eligibility for buying those Pokémon cards that the new requirement is applied to. Children under 15 also are not normally able to acquire a My Number Card, so they won’t be able to purchase items with that restriction either.

In the case of non-Japan residents being unable to buy the cards, that might be by design. Foreign scalpers are perceived as accounting for a large number of Pokémon card scalpers in Japan, and the fact that the cards are printed with Japanese text only, and therefore unlikely to be used by non-residents to actually play the game back in their home countries, making bulk purchases seem suspicious. As for Japan-resident kids under 15 purchasing items from the Pokémon Center Online, that would require a credit card, something they can’t get either, so they were already going to need their parents’ help making the transaction, so a parent’s My Number can be used for their order.

That does still leave residents of Japan who haven’t yet obtained a My Number Card in a bind, as well as those who are uneasy about having a Japanese government identification app on their phone, unaccounted for. While every adult Japan resident has been issued a number and paper notice of it, not everyone has applied for the official plastic My Number card, with many holdouts citing concerns over privacy or personal data security. They instead use other forms of ID, such as insurance cards, student IDs, or foreign resident cards, but these are not compatible with the Digital Agency’s Digital Identification App, and so will not be accepted for use to place orders on affected items through the Pokémon Center Online.

If this new system works as intended and helps keep Pokémon cards out of scalpers’ greedy little hands so that more can flow into the figuratively cleaner ones of actual fans, that’d be great. From an international perspective, as discussed above, there really aren’t that many foreign tourists in Japan who’re dead-set on buying the newest, highest-demand Pokémon card packs anyway, what with the language barrier and the fact that organized Pokémon Card Game competitions generally only allow local-market cards to be used.

There is, however, an unsettling aspect to the new system, in that it’s being integrated into the Pokémon Center Online store, which doesn’t sell just Pokémon cards. The Pokémon Center Online also offers a huge variety of plushies, toys, trinkets, and other souvenir-friendly items with no language-barrier or overseas-usage issues. Sometimes items in those categories also become the target of scalpers, which raises the question of whether, in the future, they too might require the government’s Digital Identification App, and thus a My Number Card, to purchase. And if the technology exists to implement the identification system through the Pokémon Center Online, could it one day also be introduced at physical Pokémon Center superstores in Japan, especially since shoppers will be expected to have their phones on them anyway?

For now, though, the Digital Identification App is only going to be used for selected Pokémon Card Game items, as well as for registration for attendance at certain Pokémon Card Game events (likely ones with some sort of card giveaway for attendees). Hopefully it won’t end up being expanded to a point where legit-fan foreign tourists can’t make in-person purchases of new merch.

Source: Pokémon Card Game official website via Oricon News via Livedoor News
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