Japanese Diners Club Moving In : Glendale Office Will Urge More U.S. Firms to Take Cards

Diners Club of Japan has chosen Southern California for its first foray outside of its home territory.

Diners Club of Japan officially opened an office in Glendale last Wednesday to serve Japanese cardholders and to help persuade more U.S. businesses to accept the Diners Club card. “Los Angeles was an obvious choice because there are lots of Japanese tourists coming to America,” said Naosuke Tokuyama, president of Diners Club of Japan, a franchise of Diners Club International.

Citicorp owns the U.S. Diners Club operation, known as Citicorp Diners Club, another of the 50 Diners Club International franchises. Tokyo-based Diners Club of Japan is owned by Fuji Bank, Japan Travel Bureau and Citicorp. Japan Travel Bureau is that nation’s largest travel agency.

Diners Club of Japan saw its revenue grow 24% last year, Tokuyama said through an interpreter. About a third of that growth came from card use in the United States. Diners Club of Japan has about 570,000 members.

“As volume goes up, there is more need for services--for example, cardholders lose their cards and don’t know where to go or where the automated teller machine is,” he said. “It is also obvious that we need people to speak Japanese.”

In the United States, growth at Citicorp Diners Club has been less impressive, said Spencer Nilson, publisher of the Nilson Report, a Santa Monica credit card newsletter.

Aside from a government contract for 400,000 cards, Diners Club has about 1.4 million U.S. cardholders--”and that’s about what they had when I was a vice president at Diners Club 30 years ago,” Nilson said.

Diners Club could use help from the Japanese in getting more businesses to accept the card, he said.

“Diners Club is pretty good in some countries,” Nilson said. “The United States is probably the worst place for honoring Diners Club cards.”

To boost Diners Club, Citicorp is spending $10 million in print and radio advertising, the most that the company has spent since it bought Diners Club in 1981.

The Diners Club card, like the American Express card, is a charge card. That means that the balance must be paid in full each month. MasterCard and Visa are credit cards that charge interest on the unpaid balance.