Actress Mio Imada and Hikakin, a popular YouTuber, pose for photos during Line Corp.'s media event Thursday in Tokyo. (via: japan times)

Line Pay ¥30 Billion Campaign: Feel free to send ¥1,000 to all your friend

As the battle of cashless services among tech firm in Japan is getting tighter and tighter, on Thursday, the biggest and most popular messaging app LINE Corp announced their new program “¥30 Billion Reward Campaign” starting next week to increase the usage of Line Pay service.  

The company revealed the campaign as the Largest reward from LINE, the program will run for 10 days, starting from 20 to 29 May. During the event, LINE users can freely send ¥1,000 to their LINE Friends through messaging app without any charge. 

The campaign is only available for LINE Pay users in Japan with their identification has been confirmed by LINE through the designed procedure. According to the company, The users may only send the ¥1,000 “LINE Pay bonus” to the same user one time but they might send it to as many pals as they want. One user can only receive a bonus once. 

Line Pay is a digital payment service designed to allows users to pay with a QR code or bar code at stores. The cashless system makes the users feel convenient because they don't have to bring cash every time going shopping. They can also transfer digital money (e-money) to other users through LINE Pay app. 

LINE hopes through this campaign many users will become active LINE Pay users. Based on the company data, LINE active users in Japan are about 80 million and 32 million are registered as LINE Pay users. 

Jun Masuda, chief strategy and marketing officer at LINE said that the payment aspect has been a focus on cashless system and many providers have been running various program.   

Before LINE Pay ¥30 Billion Campaign, their rival PayPay Corp, a smartphone payment provider under SoftBank Corp and Yahoo Japan Corp released ¥10 billion campaigns. PayPay users get a 20 percent discount when they shop with PayPay.   

Masuda added that ¥30 billion is an “appropriate” amount of investment to promote the Pay LINE while people are in a celebratory mood with the new Reiwa Era. The campaign will end when the reward amount reaches ¥30 billion even though it comes in the middle of the event period.  

Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/16/business/corporate-business/line-pay-¥30-billion-campaign-will-allow-users-send-free-¥1000-friends/#.XN4r9y-B3LY