In Japan, cash is still the mainstream payment methodology, with the current cashless payment ratio remaining at 20 per cent

PayPay Corporation, a joint venture established by SoftBank and Yahoo Japan, has teamed up with India’s leading digital payments company Paytm to launch a QR code-based smartphone payment services in Japan.

Paytm, a SoftBank portfolio company, had rolled out QR-based payments services in India in 2017.

In Japan, cash (bank notes and coins) is still the mainstream payment methodology, with the current cashless payment ratio remaining at 20 per cent. Consequently, the government is taking measures to raise the cashless payment ratio to 40 per cent by 2025, with a long-term goal of 80 per cent. To aid these efforts, SoftBank and Yahoo Japan established PayPay Corporation in June 2018.

PayPay, SoftBank, Yahoo and Paytm will expand the number of users by including the customer base of SoftBank and “Yahoo! Wallet” comprising approximately 40 million accounts. They will also deploy the platform using SoftBank’s sales know-how, and develop a tailored service offering leveraging Paytm’s technology.

With the launch of PayPay, Yahoo Japan will terminate Yahoo! Wallet’s current smartphone settlement function. The PayPay platform will be integrated with Yahoo! JAPAN ID, giving existing Yahoo wallet customers the option to use PayPay functions within Yahoo! JAPAN’s smartphone app.

Cashless payment will be available on either PayPay’ app or ‘Yahoo! JAPAN app. Over time, customers will be able to use the services in a wide range of stores from nationwide chain stores to individual merchants in each region.

Paytm is a m-commerce-cum-digital payments company serving over 300 million customers and eight million merchants.

In February, Paytm announced an investment of INR 600 crore (about US$90 million then) to expand its QR code-based payments services.

The post Paytm teams up with SoftBank to launch QR code-based payment services in Japan appeared first on e27.