The third-largest convenience store in Japan, Lawson, collaborates with KDDI to set its foot to digital payment. (Image via Phoneweek)

KDDI, Lawson collaborate for digital payment

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Business & Industry
Retail & Food Services
Dec 17, 2019
4492
As the Japanese government is doing efforts to encourage its domestic businesses to implement digital payment, the third-largest convenience store in Japan, Lawson, revealed its collaboration with one of the largest telecom operators, KDDI, to realize digital payment.

KDDI acquired a 2.1 percent stake in Lawson as part of the partnership for the digital payment. Regarding the price it had to pay, KDDI declined to reveal the figures. Revealed on Monday, KDDI and Lawson agreed to utilize each other’s strongest point, KDDI with its tech and Lawson with its vast network of convenience stores.

The telecom operator also will acquire 20 percent issued shares in Loyalty Marketing, the company that operates the Ponta loyalty point card. Ponta is managed by Lawson’s parent company, Mitsubishi Corp, whose holding will fall to 22.37 percent.

Hence since May 2019, KDDI had integrated its system into the Ponta loyalty system, making the biggest loyalty network with over 100 million subscribers.

However, KDDI is not the only ally of Lawson. Besides KDDI, Lawson also collaborates with KDDI’s rival, NTT Docomo.

“Cash is King” policy is still a thing in Japan due to the low crime rate, the vast amount of automatic teller machines (ATMs), and ultra-low interest rates. As a result, digital payment became a late bloomer in Japan.

Fortunately, more and more parties are encouraging the Japanese to go mobile. Especially, since the Japanese government held rebate campaigns for digital payment. The Japanese government is encouraging digital payment to crank productivity in the nations stricken by labor crunch.

The target is to double the percentage of the electronic settlement to 80 percent by 2025 eventually.

The campaign might have shown its result. For example, “PayPay”, QR code-based payment app jointly owned by SoftBank and Yahoo! Japan, saw a surge in their subscribers since October.

Source: https://bit.ly/2PrHa5I

Business , Trade , Convenience-Store , E-wallet , Digital-Payment , Payment , Asia , Japan , Lawson , KDDI , Internet , IoT