Starting in December, Kyoto’s Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion) and Ginkaku-ji (Silver Pavilion) will introduce “Omairi Pay,” a system that lets visitors make their monetary offerings via smartphone tap payment instead of cash. The system is designed so that payment records don’t show which temple or shrine the money went to, reportedly out of consideration for freedom of religion. On 5ch, reactions were split: some lamented that cashless offerings “lose their sense of sacredness” or insisted “cash purists aren’t changing,” debating the deeper meaning of offerings, while others pointed to practical motives on the temples’ side, like dodging bank fees for exchanging coins and the hassle of managing loose change.
Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji Go Cashless for Offerings Too — Tap-to-Pay “Omairi Pay” Arrives in December, With Built-in Anonymity Out of Respect for Freedom of Religion
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This app's garbage — it only lets you pick amounts of 500 yen or more!
Don't use this thing!!!
4AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:04
As a tourist, having to pay the admission fee and THEN an offering on top always makes me think even Buddha's pretty greedy.
5AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:07
Eh, nobody's gonna use this thing anyway, so no big deal.
6AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:07
Guess even the gods are going cashless now.
7AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:12
I wonder if a method this devoid of any sense of reverence will actually catch on.
8AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:32
You don't have to go that far just to toss in an offering, lol.
9AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:36
I'm generally more of a cashless-payment guy, but when it comes to offerings, I'm team cash.
10AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:38
If offerings drop because of this and a place goes under, well, that's just part of history too.
Plenty of shrines and temples across the country have folded that way before.
12AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:49
With digital payments, a temple's offering income basically becomes an open book, lol.
13AnonymousOct 28, 2026 17:51
Are they planning on keeping this tax-exempt forever and ever?
14AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:05
I'm from the generation taught that the gods and Buddha notice you by the "clink" of the coin hitting the box.
15AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:13
Zero sense of reverence in this.
Guess they just didn't want to deal with the hassle and the fees.
16AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:18
In Buddhist terms it's an act of charitable giving (kisha), so it shouldn't matter who actually receives it.
The whole practice is about letting go of greed and attachment to material things.
31AnonymousOct 28, 2026 21:36
Re: #16
"Not knowing where it was given" just means the shrine or temple's name won't show up on your payment statement.
17AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:24
Kinkaku-ji is fairly spacious with a decent amount of walking path, and admission is 500 yen.
Though honestly, the Golden Pavilion itself lost that glossy, freshly-lacquered shine it used to have — that's a real loss.
Ginkaku-ji, meanwhile, is basically a shack that isn't even silver calling itself the "Silver Pavilion," and charges a laughable 1000 yen admission.
The path around it is cramped too — if you're only picking one, it's Kinkaku-ji, no question.
18AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:37
I really don't want to cram yet another unnecessary app onto my phone.
19AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:43
A few years back my kid said, "they should just let you pay offerings with PayPay," and I laughed it off with "that would take all the meaning out of it" — never imagined it would actually come to this.
20AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:53
Visiting temples and shrines is basically my hobby and I've been to a ton of them, but I've never once actually prayed or tossed in an offering. Not even 1 yen on New Year's visits.
To me they're purely cultural heritage sites. I genuinely don't get the act of paying money there — like, is this some kind of indulgence?
21AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:54
From the temples' and shrines' point of view, banks charge fees to convert all that loose change into bills, so going cashless might actually be the convenient option for them.
22AnonymousOct 28, 2026 18:56
Atago Shrine has been accepting electronic-money offerings since before COVID.
You can pay with the same apps you already use in daily life.
23AnonymousOct 28, 2026 19:09
Speaking of Kinkaku-ji, Sakuragi Rui comes to mind. (a VTuber)
24AnonymousOct 28, 2026 19:19
I've already got way too many apps as it is, not installing this one too.
Tossing in the annoying loose change sitting in my wallet is just the right amount of effort.
30AnonymousOct 28, 2026 20:41
I don't even use QR code payments.
32AnonymousOct 28, 2026 21:38
Why not just make it "watch an ad" instead?
33AnonymousOct 28, 2026 23:14
Religious corporations: "But if it's not cash, how are we supposed to dodge taxes?!"
35AnonymousOct 29, 2026 00:11
Re: #33
The government: "Not on my watch."
37AnonymousOct 29, 2026 00:48
Honestly, getting stuck with a pile of coins from offerings is kind of a pain.
38AnonymousOct 29, 2026 01:08
This is coming from the same Kyoto Buddhist Association that was opposing cashless donations back in 2019, claiming it could leak personal information and infringe on freedom of religion.
39AnonymousOct 29, 2026 01:09
↓Yoshimitsu and Yoshimasa with a word↓ (the shoguns who built Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, respectively)
40AnonymousOct 29, 2026 01:48
Sakuragi Rui was great.
Background and Talking Points on This Topic
Income for religious corporations is generally tax-exempt, but once offerings and donations go digital, transaction records are retained, and there’s still no clear rule on how far taxation or disclosure requirements would extend. The design choice to keep “which temple or shrine received the money” untraceable is meant to protect freedom of religion, but it’s an easy point to misread — on the thread, some suspected it was really just a way to “dodge taxes.” In reality, some shrines and temples, such as Atago Shrine, have already been accepting electronic-money offerings for some time, so this isn’t the first attempt at it. Another factor cited behind the push toward cashless systems is the burden on shrines and temples from bank fees charged when exchanging coins for bills.
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