- Why a rejection is more often about what you typed into the form than about an expired document, once you know that the check is a literal match on name, residence and date of birth
- What happens under Japan's anti-money-laundering rules when the address printed on your ID is no longer where you live, and the six-month condition attached to the supplementary document you will then be asked for
- Why the postal route relies on mail marked "not to be forwarded", which is exactly what breaks if you have just moved
Quick answers
- Q: Was my verification rejected because my document was out of date?
- A: Expiry is one reason, but there is a separate one: the details you typed into the application form do not match what is printed on the document. Under Japan's Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds, what gets checked for an individual is name, residence and date of birth, and the address is matched against the document as printed. Collapsing block numbers into hyphens or leaving the building name out lands squarely in that gap.
- Q: Can I open an account right after moving house?
- A: Usually yes, but with extra steps. Where the residence recorded on an identification document is not the current one, the National Police Agency guidance says the operator has to confirm the current residence using another identification document or a supplementary document — a tax certificate, a social insurance premium receipt, a utility receipt and so on. And on the postal route the paperwork is sent as mail that is not forwarded, so a change-of-address request with the post office will not redirect it.
This article covers identity verification when opening an account at a crypto asset exchange service provider in Japan, as a matter of general rules and practical sequencing. Which documents are accepted, which verification methods are offered, and how long review takes all differ by operator. We do not name exchanges and attach day counts to them, and we do not assess whether your application will pass. Sources are the National Police Agency and the Financial Services Agency, linked in place — for your own application, check with that operator's official support.
Three days later, and it wasn't an approval
Photograph the front of your ID, photograph the back, follow the prompt and photograph your own face, submit. Ten minutes, tops. From there it feels like nothing is left but waiting.
The email that arrived three days later said the submitted details could not be verified. Please try again. It did not say what had gone wrong. The document was in date, the shots were sharp, and I had no idea what to change before doing the whole thing a second time.
In my case the mismatch was in the address field. The document printed the block and lot in full Japanese form; I had typed the compact hyphenated version and dropped the building name, keeping only the flat number. Post reaches me perfectly well written that way. Put the two side by side and any human reads them as the same place. It still failed.
That can feel needlessly fussy. It isn't the operator being difficult, though. What they are required to check is fixed by law, and once you know what that is, you know which field to fix.
Only three things are checked — but they are checked literally
Crypto asset exchange service providers in Japan are specified business operators under the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds, and opening an account triggers verification at the time of transaction. The National Police Agency's outline of the Act (as of 7 August 2026, in Japanese) defines what that means.
Verification of identifying matters means confirming, by means of a driver's licence or other official certificate, the identifying matters of the customer or their representative — for a natural person, the name, residence and date of birth; for a legal person, the name and the location of the head or principal office.
Three fields, for an individual. Date of birth comes from a picker, so it rarely drifts. Most people copy their name across correctly. The one with the widest scope for free text, and the one that can legitimately be written several different ways, is the address.
The same document is firmer about addresses than people expect. Except for documents like passports, where a residence entry is not mandatory, an identification document has to carry a residence entry to count as one at all. The address is not a nice-to-have field; it is part of what makes the document usable.
Four places where addresses drift
Ask around and the same handful of cases come up. None of them is a mistake in ordinary life, which is what makes them easy to repeat.
| What the document prints | What people type |
|---|---|
| The block and lot written out in full | The compact hyphenated form |
| Building name plus flat number | Flat number only, or the building dropped entirely |
| Older rural address elements such as ōaza and aza | City and place name only, with those elements cut |
| Nothing beyond the lot number | The flat number added, because that's where you live |
The fourth one drifts in the opposite direction. The document has no flat number, so you add one because it is factually your address. The post office would agree with you. The match does not.
There is also a question of state rather than formatting: which of the documents in your drawer currently shows where you live. After a move, some are updated and some are not, and which one you photograph decides the outcome.
That is where the rules get concrete. The same National Police Agency outline says this:
Where the residence recorded on the identification document is not the current one, or where there is no residence entry at all, the operator must confirm the current residence by taking another identification document or a supplementary document — a tax certificate, a social insurance premium receipt, a utility receipt, a document issued by a public agency, and the like — either presented or sent as an original or copy.
Supplementary documents come with a condition. Where they have a validity period, they must be valid on the day they are presented or sent; otherwise they must carry a receipt stamp or an issue date, and that date must fall within the six months before the day they are presented or sent. The My Number notification card is not accepted as a supplementary document.
That explains why applying just after a move is heavier than it looks. One document becomes one document plus a second piece of paper carrying a date from the last six months. If you gave up paper utility bills years ago, this is where you stall.
Names drift too: former surnames, middle names, and the characters themselves
Addresses are the main event, but the name field is not safe ground either.
If your identification document shows a former surname alongside your current one, you have to pick which goes in the form. If you have a middle name, a form with exactly two fields gives it nowhere to sit. And some kanji variants printed on Japanese documents cannot be typed into a plain web form at all.
All three are handled differently by different operators, so this article cannot tell you which answer is right. What it can tell you is that asking beforehand is cheaper than being rejected, receiving an email with no reason in it, and losing three days. One line to support does it: "My identification document shows a former surname alongside my current one — which should I enter in the name field?"
Asking after a rejection means your question drags a guess along with it, because you are also trying to explain what might have failed. Asking first keeps it to one sentence, and you can re-read the address on your document while you wait for the reply. I did this in the wrong order and bought myself an extra round trip.
eKYC and the postal route make you wait for different things
Several non-face-to-face methods exist. Of the ones the National Police Agency outline lists, these are the shapes an individual actually gets offered.
With A, once you hit send, what remains is the operator's review. B has postal transit inside it. How many days either one takes differs by operator — review capacity and application volumes vary, and they vary for the same operator across the year — so no day count belongs in this article. What can be said is structural: B contains a stretch that neither you nor the operator can compress.
"Not to be forwarded" means exactly that. A change-of-address request at the post office does not redirect this kind of mail. If the address printed on your document is not the address where you can physically collect post today, route B does not close. That is the usual reason a post-move application dies.
Read positively, this is also a choice you get to make. If you hold a document whose IC chip can be read, you can pick a route that does not wait on the postal service. What is actually available is set out in each operator's guidance.
If you haven't counted backwards from the send date, only the market moves
Everything above is procedure. The operational half is about order, and reversing it is what helped most.
I used to open the account first and think about what to do with it afterwards. That doesn't work, because until verification clears there is nothing to do at all. Prices move while you wait, and when prices move you move with them. By the time the account opened, neither the amount nor the plan was the one I had started with.
Now I lay the dates out from the back.
Between steps three and four sits the time it takes to get documents in order. If your address is out of date, fixing the document or collecting a supplementary one pushes the application date earlier still.
What happens after the account opens is outside this piece. How to make a first transfer is covered in sending an amount you can afford to lose first, being kept waiting on the way out is in unrealized gains you cannot withdraw, and keeping records once you are trading is in what to sort out before 31 December. This article stops at the point where the account becomes usable.
Whether the operator is registered is something you can check first
Separate from verification, there is one more check that finishes before you press apply.
The Financial Services Agency page for users of crypto assets states that crypto asset exchange service providers must be registered, and asks users to confirm that the provider they use holds that registration. The same page publishes the list of registered crypto asset exchange service providers as a PDF, so looking up a company name takes about a minute.
That page also carries the FSA's reminders that crypto assets are not legal tender and that their prices fluctuate. Passing verification and deciding to use a given operator are two different decisions.
Something you can look at while the account is still pending
Waiting for verification tends to be dead time. Kingfin's affiliate programme is free to join and free to use, so the dashboard and the creative assets are at least something you can look through in the meantime. Whether any commission arises, and how much, is not guaranteed. The trading service being promoted carries the risk of losing your principal.
Sign up freeSix checks before you submit
Everything above, in the form you can act on right before applying. About five minutes.
When the rejection landed, I decided the exchange had a strict review team. What was strict was the rule, and the field that needed fixing was the address I had typed myself. Once you see that, the application takes ten minutes and stays taking ten minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Disclosure: This article is informational and educational content from Kingfin's English editorial team. It does not solicit an account with any particular crypto asset exchange service provider and does not constitute legal advice. Statements about the Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds were checked against National Police Agency and Financial Services Agency publications at the time of writing, but legislation is amended and published material is updated. Which identification documents are accepted, which verification methods are offered, and how long review takes all differ by operator, and vary for the same operator over time. For your own application, confirm the details with that operator's official support. Kingfin's affiliate programme promotes OlympTrade, an FX and binary-options trading service that is not registered as a financial instruments business in Japan. Trading always carries the risk of losing your principal, and we cannot promise that anyone will definitely earn or that gains are guaranteed. Affiliate commissions are likewise not guaranteed and results vary from person to person; only ever trade with money you can afford to lose, and make your own decisions at your own responsibility.
