How to Create a Rakuten ID in English — The Sign-Up Form, Field by Field (2026)

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya — I help newcomers settle into life in Japan, and this is the first small task I set for everyone. A Rakuten ID is a free account that logs you in to Rakuten shopping, points, payments and Rakuten Mobile. You make it once, online, in about the time it takes to finish a coffee.

The registration page is available in English, which almost nobody realises because it opens in Japanese by default. Six fields are required, and two of them — your date of birth and your gender — can never be edited after you submit. That's really the whole reason I wrote this page out field by field instead of telling you to "just sign up".

What a Rakuten ID actually is

It's a membership account, not a product. You register an email address and a password, and that pair then signs you in across Rakuten's services — the marketplace, the points balance, the pay app, cloud storage, and the mobile line if you get one. Creating it and keeping it costs nothing, and you don't need a Japanese phone number or a Japanese bank account to make one.

That last part matters more than it sounds. Plenty of the accounts you'll want in your first month are locked behind something you don't have yet: an address, a phone number, a residence card that's still being processed. The Rakuten ID isn't. You can make it on your second evening here, or honestly before you fly.

Do you need the ID before Rakuten Mobile?

It depends on which way you're applying, and the official application guide is explicit about it. If you're bringing an existing Japanese number across with MNP, a Rakuten ID is required. If you're getting a brand-new number, it's optional — though the guide still recommends it, because the member benefits attach to the ID rather than to the phone line.

My own advice is to make it first regardless. Creating an account halfway through a phone application, on a page you can't read, while a browser tab is timing out, is a bad twenty minutes. Two minutes of admin now removes it entirely.

Register in English — the switch is at the top of the page

The member registration form sits at member.id.rakuten.co.jp, and it loads in Japanese. Up in the top-right corner there's a small language row: 日本語 | English | 简体中文. Click English and the entire form re-renders in English, labels and help text included.

So the form is available in English and Simplified Chinese. There is no Korean option on this page as of September 2026 — if Korean is your first language, the English version is the one to use.

Once you've switched, it's a three-screen flow, and the page shows you where you are the whole way: Enter User Information, then Confirm Information Entered, then Complete Registration. Nothing is charged at any point.

The six required fields

Everything marked Required, in the order the English form asks for it. First, your email address, typed twice — and the second box asks you not to copy and paste, which is deliberate, because a typo here is what locks people out later. An address that's already registered to another account won't be accepted.

Second, a username. You can either reuse your email address as the login, or set a separate one: six or more characters, letters and numbers, and it can't be all digits. Third, a password: six or more characters, letters and numbers, and it can't be identical to your username.

Fourth, your name, as First Name and Last Name. Fifth, your date of birth. Sixth, your gender, offered as Male or Female only.

That's it. Six fields, and a name is the only personal detail among them — no address, no phone number, no card.

The two fields you can't change later

Both your date of birth and your gender carry the same warning on the form: once registered, this information cannot be changed. Not "contact support to change it" — the field simply isn't editable afterwards.

The date of birth is where I see mistakes, and it's a format problem rather than a carelessness problem. The English form asks for it as Day / Month / Year. The Japanese version of the same form asks Year / Month / Day. If you switch languages halfway through, or you're copying from a Japanese form you filled in earlier, it is genuinely easy to enter the day where the year goes.

So before you press the button on screen one, read those two lines back once. You'll never need to think about them again.

If you end up on the Japanese form: the katakana box

Worth knowing, because sometimes a link drops you straight into the Japanese version. That form asks for your name twice: once as 氏名, and again as 氏名（フリガナ）, which accepts full-width katakana only. Latin letters are rejected there.

The English form has no such field at all. That's the single best reason to use the language switch rather than pushing through — you skip having to transliterate your own name into katakana just to open an account.

One more difference in the same area: the Japanese form puts surname first, as （姓）（名）. The English form asks First Name, then Last Name. Same two boxes, opposite order.

What you can leave blank for now

Below the required block there's a longer optional section, and you can submit without touching most of it: postal code, prefecture, city or ward, the rest of your address, telephone, fax, mobile number, a nickname, a secret question, and your company or department.

Two of those are worth a comment. The postal-code lookup button is Japanese-only, so if you do fill in an address, have it written down rather than expecting the search to help you. And the prefecture dropdown includes Other (国外) — which is how you register while you're still outside Japan, then fill in a real address once you've moved in.

The nickname field is the one to be careful with, because the form says plainly that your nickname is shown to other people. Don't put your real name or your email address in it.

There's also an optional credit card block (VISA, MASTER, JCB, Diners, AMEX). You can skip it entirely at sign-up. If you do add a card, note the rule the form states: the cardholder's name has to match the member's name, and a family member's card can't be registered.

Why that card rule is worth remembering

It shows up again later. The official Rakuten Mobile application guide has a matching requirement: if you pay with a method that isn't in your own name, the named account holder has to be there with you. Different page, same principle.

It's a small thing to notice on day one, and it saves an appointment on day thirty. Whatever name you register on the ID is the name the rest of the process expects to see — so use the name exactly as it appears on your residence card.

The order that matters afterwards

If a phone line is your reason for making the ID, the sequence is worth getting right, because one step only counts when it happens first. You create the Rakuten ID. You open the referral link and log in with that ID before you apply. Then you apply for the plan, verifying your identity by photographing your residence card. Then you activate the line and place one ten-second call on the free Rakuten Link app, which completes the process.

The part people skip is the second one. Applying first and logging in afterwards doesn't register you — the login through the link is what does. Check the current terms on the official campaign page before you apply, because conditions and eligibility do change.

The natural next step: your phone plan

With the ID in place, adding a Japanese number is an online application plus a photo of your residence card — no shop visit, and an eSIM-capable phone can be connected the same day. If you're under 18 you'll need written consent and a signature from a parent or guardian, which the application guide spells out.

Our setup guide covers eligibility and the step-by-step in English, and the official page has the current terms in full. I'll be right here for the mobile part.