TOKYO—Softbank and Yahoo Japan have formed a new joint venture, PayPay, to launch a QR-based smartphone payment services in Japan by November.
According to the organizations, the joint venture will lean on the experience of Paytm, India’s largest digital payment brand and a SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio company, for technology and expertise in mobile payments in the latest efforts to move Japan away from a cash-based society. As it stands, less than 20% of payments across the country are cashless, one of the lowest worldwide for a developed economy, Telecoms said.
“The Japanese government is taking measures to raise the cashless payment ratio to 40% by 2025, with a long-term goal of 80%, the highest level globally,” Softbank said in a statement. “To aid these efforts, SoftBank and Yahoo Japan established PayPay Corporation in June 2018 and will launch its user-oriented payments platform in the fall 2018.”
With the experience of Paytm, the brand has 300-million customers and eight-million merchants, combined with the presence of SoftBank and Yahoo Japan. The Yahoo! Wallet, which has approximately 40-million accounts, will act as the foundation, with Softbank leading the sales strategy, while also developing a localized service leveraging Paytm’s technology. Once the new service has been launched, Yahoo Wallet will cease to exist, though a time-frame has not been laid out, Telecoms reported.