10.0% of Japanese over 65 bank online, against 94.2% in Sweden

The special feature of Japan's 2026 White Paper on the Ageing Society carries the tenth international comparison survey of older people, fielded between September and November 2025 with 1,267 respondents in Japan, 843 in the United States, 766 in Germany and 955 in Sweden.

Figure 9 is the one worth reading. It asks what people over 65 do online.

Messaging works. 84.1% against Sweden's 91.3% is not a meaningful gap.

Banking is 10.0% against 94.2%.

This is not a device or connectivity problem

The same people, on the same devices, message their families successfully. So the explanation cannot be that they lack hardware or a connection.

Messaging apps work and banking apps do not. The difference is produced by the applications.

Specifically:

• How much information is placed on one screen
• How much specialist vocabulary is used
• How many steps authentication takes
• Whether you can go back after a mistake
• Text size and contrast

A messaging app costs you nothing when you get it wrong, so it can be explored. A banking app moves money. When the steps are complex and the cost of an error is unclear, people stop attempting it at all.

10.0% is better understood as a measure of what people are afraid to try than of what they are unable to operate.

9.2% for government and 0.3% for medical

Lower still are government procedures at 9.2% and online medical consultation at 0.3%.

0.3% is statistically close to nobody. Against Sweden at 22.2% and the US at 20.4%, it is hard to believe the same category of service is being offered.

This is in a country with an ageing rate of 29.4% as of 1 October 2025, 36.22 million people aged 65 and over, where the 75 and over group at 17.3% now exceeds the 65 to 74 group at 12.1%.

The demand exists. People who find it hard to travel are precisely the people who should be using remote consultation.

Viewed as a market

36.22 million people are barely using digital financial or government services.

Framed as a problem, that is a social issue. Framed as a business, it is an unserved market. Winning in it does not require new technology. It requires making existing services safe to attempt.

Sweden's 94.2% establishes that older people are perfectly capable of digital banking. Where it is offered in a usable form, it gets used.

You do not need to build a separate app for older users. Reduce the steps, make actions reversible and cut the jargon in the app you already have, and the number moves.

What to change in the design

Improvements aimed at older users are, in nearly every case, improvements for everyone.

1. One task per screen. Sequential steps produce higher completion rates than a screen of parallel options.
2. State that actions can be undone. Simply writing "you can change this later" increases the number of people who proceed.
3. Do not explain jargon, remove it. Rewriting to avoid a term that needs explanation is usually faster than explaining it.
4. Count the authentication steps. Count how many times you ask someone to enter something. It is almost always more than you assumed.

None of these four involve technology designed for older people. They are ordinary design decisions.