I have never really gotten involved with various lounge access oriented credit or debit cards in the past but recently one was offered to me for just $5 a year and after looking at it for a bit it seems as though it would be silly for me to not subscribe to it seeing as how it is so little money.
JCB is based out of Japan, that is what the "J" stands for, but they have a smaller plan that seems to be geared towards putting on credit cards for places all around the world. For example, I am offered it as an option for my bank here in Mexico and friends of mine that live in Malaysia, Singapore, and of course Japan also have it offered to them. There is not a huge amount of benefits that come along with it and the only one that I am really interested in is the free lounge access at a number of airports around the world. Since it is catering mostly to Japanese customers, obviously their offerings are going to be Japan-centric.
Lounges really are the way to go if you are traveling. For me, I actually look forward to a layover of 4 hours or so when I know I have lounge access because they have comfortable seats, lots of electrical outlets, and food and drinks available for free around the clock.
The only issue with a JCB membership is that they don't have a lot of lounges that they themselves personally own anywhere outside of Asia. They have a few in Germany and the UK but other than that they are all located in China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Oh they have one in Hawaii as well but that place is too expensive for me to ever visit.
The thing for me is that I have a trip coming up later this year where I will visit Japan and have a layover in Taiwan at least once. There is also a chance that I will visit Thailand and Vietnam although that hasn't been determined yet. The annual fee on this card I am being offered is only $5 for the year with no recurring fees after the fact because I guess some law was passed somewhere that the company cannot auto renew the membership without your permission.
So in my mind, the only thing that I need to do is use one of these lounges a single time and it will have been worth it for me to have gotten it. I might not even use the card for anything else.
I believe that there are programs like this all around the world that are offered for just a few dollars whereas lounge access for single-use is something that will easily cost $40 - $80 per time and even that is kind of worth it in my mind so if I can get the membership for a mere $5, why not?
If you want to see if you are eligible you can check here although I don't think that list is comprehensive because my bank in Mexico is not featured on it but it was merely offered to me in my personal bank.
As someone that has personally been very negatively affected by a long layover in an uncomfortable chair in the "gen pop" section of an international airport many times in his life I can say with 100% certainty that these programs are definitely worth it, even if you only use it a couple of times. They do have limits on how many times you can use it, for me it will be 6 times per year but if I am able to get to use it that many times, it will be well worth the $5 price for membership, don't you think so?