BODY: Scalpers and bots have made buying Pokémon Card Game products in Japan a brutal lottery for years — and now The Pokémon Company is preparing one of the most aggressive countermeasures the hobby has ever seen.
On May 21, 2026, The Pokémon Company announced it is studying the introduction of an identity verification system using Japan's My Number Card (マイナンバーカード) for Pokémon TCG product sales and official events. The company is aiming to begin operating the system around August 2026, pending further preparation and testing.
The My Number Card is Japan's government-issued IC chip ID, increasingly used for everything from tax filing to health insurance. By tying TCG purchases and event entries to verified individual identities, Pokémon hopes to curb the industrial-scale scalping that has plagued recent releases like the Scarlet & Violet expansions and the wildly oversubscribed Pokémon Card 151 reprints.
Details on exactly which products and events will require verification, and how the data will be handled, have not yet been disclosed. The Pokémon Company says it will share more information closer to the launch window, including the scope of stores and event types covered.
The insider take
From Tokyo, this move feels both inevitable and quietly radical. Japanese fans have watched lottery-only releases, one-per-person caps, and store-side ID checks all fail against organized resellers — many of whom ship cards straight to overseas markets where prices run multiples higher. Leveraging My Number, the same card residents use at city hall, is a uniquely Japanese solution that only works because adoption finally crossed critical mass last year. Expect pushback over privacy and the friction it adds for casual buyers and tourists, but for everyday collectors who just want a booster box at MSRP, this is the first proposal in years that looks like it could actually bite.
Originally reported by 4Gamer.net − 最新記事 (Japanese).