Japanese credit card at U.S.

I have heard of the news that Japanese people was arrested due to be suspected of using fake credit card in U.S. The credit card is this.

Many people in the U.S would think that a card like this must not be a credit card and could be probably a fake like toy cards for children. This makes a little bit sense to me because the design of Japanese credit card looks cheap and does not look like an issued credit card in U.S. If you go to the link below which is google image search of "Japanese credit card", then you will be able to figure out how Japanese cards look like.

google image search results

I have used Japanese credit card at the U.S many times, and I have many experiences that cashiers looked at my credit card for a little bit longer time and asked me to show my ID card like my car license card or my passport. This would be because of a similar reason like the new. Nobody is asked to do like this when I hang out with my fiends.

One of the reason of this is coming from a fact that many Japanese companies collaborate with credit card companies and make own credit card which has companies' logo printed on credit cards. Therefore, such logos are not familiar to people in the U.S. As far as I can remember, this trend does not exist from long time ago but became popular last 15 years. Before that, using credit card itself was not popular in Japan by culture, rather people used to prefer to use cash. However, people became aware of convenience of credit cards and at the same time many companies also began to make own logo credit card so that user can get benefit by using that card at that place. This positive feedback has made credit card become popular in Japan. For example, a supermarket has issued their card and people use that card at that supermarket, then people can get points and use points to buy something foods.