When off base shopping in a store I'm always asked a question when paying with a credit card. Obviously I assume it's how many payments (installments/whatever you want to call it) I want. I usually just hold up a finger to signal I want my purchase paid for in one go.

But my question is... how does this work if I wanted more than "one payment"? Do you have to qualify, or does it just break up the payments? And if so, what's the delay between the next payment? How many payments can I break it into? Etc, etc.

Thank you for clarifying this. My husband and I had a conversation about it today and figured this would be the best place to get it answered clearly.

Revolving credit is a type of credit that does not have a fixed number of payments, in contrast to installment credit.

http://blog.alientimes.org/2007/03/...edit-card/

http://www.frugaljapan.com/2005/03/...-the-code/

You can also transfer money from your bank account into the credit card account if you want to pay off the remainder of your revolving balance.

At the point of sale, they may ask you how many payments you want to split it into (this is called split payment [分割払い=bunkatsu barai]). Sometimes your credit card will allow this and sometimes it won’t. This means that the store may offer it, but your specific credit card may not. In some cases, the store won’t allow it. The number of payments you can split the purchase into also depends on the store and the card. The standard is two payments, but sometimes you will get other options. If you decide to pay it in two, you will be charged half this month and half the next, but the way that you pay your credit card balance will not change. If you use a regular card, you will have to pay off half this month and half the next. If you use a revolving card, half will be applied to this month’s amount and half will be applied to next month’s amount, but you will still only pay the amount that you set per month.

When you get a Joyo credit card, you will be asked if you want a revolving account. If you do, you will get two cards in the mail, a regular one and a revolving one. Use the regular one when you want to pay off the full amount the following month and use the revolving one when only want to pay a certain set amount per month. Of course, if you use both in one month, you will have to pay both the set amount for purchases that were made with the revolving card and the total amount for purchases that were made with the regular card.

Thank you, Chris. It all becomes clear now, just the answer I was looking for. Can't believe I didn't think to look it up myself, lol. 

I think if I was given a Joyo card with revolving credit too I'd just screw my self over by using both of them all the time, ha ha.