Photo/Illutration Taro Kono, minister for digital transformation, speaks at an Upper House special committee session on June 5. (Koichi Ueda)

In the latest stumble for the government’s My Number Card system, a large number of cards were linked to a different person’s bank account for receiving public money, such as cash handouts.

In most cases, parents are believed to have registered their own bank account with their child’s My Number Card.

Taro Kono, minister for digital transformation, told an Upper House special committee session on June 5 that the government will urge those who made such incorrect registrations to link the card to the rightful owner’s bank account.

He said a cash handout will not be paid if the bank account registered on the card was opened under a different individual’s name.

Kono would not disclose how many cards have been linked to a different person’s bank account.

The bank account linked to the card can also receive other types of public payouts, such as pension benefits, child allowances, welfare payments and tax refunds.

A Digital Agency official told the committee session that the problem caught the attention of policymakers during a general review of bank account information registered with the My Number Card in late May.

However, Kono said his agency's explanation was wrong and apologized at a news conference on June 6.

He said the Digital Agency received a report about incorrect registrations from the National Tax Agency in February but that the information was not shared among Digital Agency officials, including the minister. 

The Asahi Shimbun's digital edition had reported on the evening of June 5 that the government came across these cases around February, citing sources within the National Tax Agency and the Digital Agency. 

A National Tax Agency official told The Asahi Shimbun the taxpayer’s name on the My Number Card did not match the bank account holder’s name “in a considerable number of instances, instead of just one or two” when tax refunds for 2022 were being made.

Laws related to the My Number Card were enacted on June 2, including a new system to promote the registration of bank accounts for receiving public money.

During Diet deliberations, the government did not disclose that a large number of cards were linked to a different person's bank account.

Kono said the government is investigating cases where the cards of people with different family names are linked to the same bank account ahead of cases where the cards of members of a family are apparently linked to the single bank account.

He acknowledged that the system allows people to link their cards to the bank account of a stranger under certain conditions.

Still, Kono said cardholders are responsible if they intentionally registered a family member’s bank account.

He said these cases have been caused “neither by human error nor by a system error,” apparently trying to emphasize the differences from the large number of mix-ups that have plagued the personal identification card.

The government has stipulated that only the bank account under the cardholder’s name should be linked to the My Number Card.

Masahiko Shoji, a professor of information sociology at Musashi University, said the underlying assumption has been compromised due to the lack of a system to check whether the bank account holder is the same as the cardholder.

“The government may be correct in saying the problem occurred neither through human error nor through a system error, but it occurred because the government failed to call for sufficient attention about the possibility that such unauthorized registrations could be made,” he said.

“The government should be held responsible because the problem stems from flaws in the way operational processes and the online administrative service system that is also used for registration were originally designed.”

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