Paytm’s Japanese foray PayPay rakes up 10M users and 100M transactions within 10 months of launch
PayPay is a joint venture between Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank, Yahoo Japan, and Indian payment major Paytm (owned by One97 Communications).
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In just 10 months of launch, Japanese smartphone-based payment settlement service PayPay has notched up 10 million users, and one million stores enabled by the service as well as witnessed a total of 100 million transactions on the network.
The offering is a joint venture between Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Corp., Yahoo Japan Corporation, and Indian payment major Paytm (owned by One97 Communications).
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Harinder Takhar, CEO - Paytm Labs and Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma along with Softbank's Masayoshi Son.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder of One97 Communications, took to Twitter to share this news. He thanked the Indian users for giving them the "chance to build world-class tech going places".
On this milestone, Harinder Takhar, CEO - Paytm Labs, Canada, said,
"PayPay's success is a testament to Paytm's ability to leverage its technology and business knowledge to expand globally. It’s amazing that Paytm is kickstarting the mobile payment and cashless revolution in Japan after revolutionising Indian digital payments ecosystem."
PayPay allows users to store money from a bank account in their PayPay wallet and make payments with it. The Japanese payment service aims to promote broader use of cashless payment in Japan and looks to provide highly convenient services to both consumers and affiliated stores. The platform leverages the QR-technology from Paytm.
During its launch in October, PayPay announced that it will be giving electronic money equivalent to 500 yen to each customer downloading the application and authenticating it with a valid Japanese mobile number.
This is similar to Paytm’s cashback strategy, which was launched in India to promote usage.
In addition, for sellers and establishments, PayPay also said during the launch that it will not be charging any fee for ‘user scan’ type settlement for three years till the end of September 2021.
Japan at present poses as a lucrative economy for the fintech revolution. Last year, in March, banks in Japan had submitted draft policies on ‘open-banking’, which will allow banks to open their APIs to fintechs for services.
Report suggests that only 6.9 percent of digital buyers in Japan prefer digital payment services in the country, with a lion's share of preference going towards credit cards, leaving much road for fintechs to disrupt the digital payment space.
And Japanese companies are also scouting suitable business use cases in India, which they can take in Japan.
In November, last year, Japanese system integration company NTT DATA announced on Tuesday that it will be acquiring a majority stake in Indian payments service provider Atom Technologies.
(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)
