Besides spending money, which typically earns 0.5% in physical stores but can sometimes go up if you, for example, link your Amazon account, there are also several other ways to earn points. Point campaigns are plentiful, and you can also earn points through games, surveys, and a once per day kuji drawing.

If you use Docomo as your phone carrier or for home internet, you’re actually already accumulating d Points! For every 1,000 yen of your Docomo bill, you get 10 points for a 1% earnings rate. But if you have a d Card Gold, you get a whopping 100 points for every 1,000 yen!

You can also earn d Points with Docomo’s electricity service, also at a 1% rate, but it applies for every 100 yen instead of every 1000 yen.

Besides the Starbucks gift cards and JAL Miles conversion options, you can also use d Points like cash at a 1 point:1 yen rate with d払い or statement credits, on the online marketplace d Market, or on Amazon.co.jp.

Without a doubt, the best value of d Points comes from invested use in the ecosystem. If you don’t frequently visit partner merchants and you don’t use Docomo for any utility services, there isn’t much upside to d Points over alternatives.

The Starbucks gift cards and JAL Miles conversions are pretty nice if you make a lot of coffee runs or fly JAL often, but outside of that there’s nothing super exciting about the point conversions with d Points.

The standard d Card allows you to earn points at 1 per 100 yen spent for all purchases with an extra 1% at certain merchants and an even wider range of bonus opportunities when used at online merchants like Amazon or Rakuten or in the d Card Point Mall. With the standard card, you also get 187 yen off your phone bill!

The d Card GOLDcomes with a 11,000 yen annual fee, for which you get a whopping 10% earnings rate for Docomo utility bills, a 100,000 yen insurance policy for your phone, and lounge access within Japan and also in Hawaii!

The GOLD card also qualifies for the 187 yen credit to your phone bill! Factoring that into the annual fee, if you’re using Docomo for your phone service, you’d save 2,244 yen per year. Ultimately, this means you can break even on the annual fee if your Docomo utilities cost you at least 8000 yen per month. That’s not hard to get to if you have 5G service, multiple phone lines, or even any phone lines and Docomo internet. Not bad!