The Pokémon scalping situation in Japan has become so out of control that The Pokémon Company (TPC) has announced (via Automaton) it’s considering requiring government ID card checks before cards can be sold to customers. In a statement posted to the official Japanese site, the company explains Japan’s My Number Cards will be required to authenticate Players Club accounts before entry even to the lottery systems which are currently used when selling cards online.
Starting in August 2026, The Pokémon Company wants to use a system whereby customers employ a third-party service that will scan the chip in the governmental My Number Card (a voluntary photographic ID system that also doubles up as the equivalent to a social security card) on a smartphone to authenticate an official Pokémon account. Using the “User Authentication Electronic Certificate,” but without storing the customer’s unique number, this level of security will be required for both buying certain TCG products from the Japanese Pokémon Center website and entering Japan-based tournaments.
The statement makes note of the lengthy process of applying for a My Number Card, which can apparently take one to two months to arrive, and suggests that customers who want to continue entering the lotteries to buy PTCG products or enter tournaments from August should apply as soon as possible.
Which is, stepping back, extraordinary. Dystopian, even. The idea of needing to present governmental ID to buy anything is an anathema to so many in the United States, let alone something as trivial as some collectible cardboard. But these are the distances The Pokémon Company is looking to go to try to stem the onslaught of scalpers who are still evading all the current systems and checks to make buying the cards (in most countries around the world) almost impossible for legitimate customers. The Pokémon Company describes this as (via machine translation) “part of our efforts to provide all customers with equal opportunities and ensure they can enjoy our services safely and securely.”
Promises to greatly increase production, which you might imagine would be a simpler solution, have been made by The Pokémon Company for well over a year now, but have so far come to nothing. Meanwhile independent card stores have found themselves massively deprioritized by TPC as larger retail chains cash in on the current craze. When even the company’s own official site is unable to manage demand, clearly the issue isn’t one that’s going to be solved by ever-more draconian measures.
It’s also hard to understand why live tournaments would require the same level of identification checks, given these in no sense involve scalping even as a concept. Could it possibly be related to a spate of backlashes from players at recent events?
It’s clear measures like these wouldn’t even be conceivable in the U.S., a country that would rather have a civil war than show ID before buying a gun, but it would seem a good idea for international versions of the Pokémon Center websites to introduce the lottery system employed by the Japanese site. Right now it’s a crazed free-for-all where most trying to access the sites when new cards are stocked sat in endless queues that only end after all the product is gone.
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