Looking to venture into Japan’s digital payments market, Paytm is collaborating with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan’s joint venture PayPay Corporation, a digital payments platform.
As reported earlier, Paytm collaborates with SoftBank to launch payments platform in Japan. The payment service is expected to be launched by the end of this year.
This partnership will help PayPay to offer QR-based mobile payment service to its users. Paytm will be providing its experience and expertise in the mobile payments domain to facilitate the launch of the payments platform by the second half of 2018 in Japan.
“It is an honour to work with Masa Son. He is a visionary entrepreneur who has seen it all: PC, telecom, mobile internet and now Artificial Intelligence, which is the way forward. We want to build a Paytm model on local AI that allows us to take mobile payments to a large population where other digital methods haven’t fully penetrated,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm.
After the launch of PayPay, Yahoo Japan will be terminating Yahoo! Wallet’s current smartphone settlement function. It will allow two types of payment methods: credit cards and electronic money. The PayPay platform will be seamlessly integrated with Yahoo! JAPAN ID, giving existing Yahoo! Wallet customers the option to use PayPay functions within Yahoo! JAPAN’s smartphone application.
With only about 20% of digital transactions, Japan’s cash dominated market provides a growth market for the digital economy. PayPay will enable its users to make digital payments to others consumers as well as merchants, giving the users more flexibility while making purchases. PayPay will be looking to double its share of digital transactions by 2025.
PayPay will leverage the vast customer base of SoftBank and Yahoo! Wallet which comprises approximately 40 million accounts to expand in the Japanese market.
Other players looking to leverage the opportunity in the Japnese digital payments market include Bank of Fukuoka, Yokohama Bank, and Resona Bank launching their own QR-code based payment system called Yoka Pay and Hama Pay.