Japanese e-Commerce Giant Rakuten With A New App That Will Probably Support Crypto Payments

One of the largest e-Commerce firms in Japan, the giant Rakuten, recently announced that a major update of its Rakuten Pay mobile app is coming and will be released on March 18th, as the digital currency news headlines outlined. According to the firm’s 2018 earnings release which was published on February 12th, the app will have a new structure that will probably support Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency payments in addition to fiat.

As the company noted in the presentation material, the new version of the app will feature “all payment solutions embedded into one platform.”

Known as “Japan’s Amazon” – Rakuten has recently restructured in terms of its corporate structure. The new company includes the firm’s cryptocurrency exchange named “Everybody’s Bitcoin” (which Rakuten acquired in August 2018 for $2.4 million) as part of the newly established payments subsidiary, Rakuten Payment.

Moreover, the firm’s earnings release specifies that the app will support QR code payments and will use the corporation’s prepaid card service, Rakuten Edy. Even though the app does not explicitly note anything about crypto support, the specification that “all payment solutions” will be supported on it implies support for crypto payments as part of its subsidiary, Rakuten Payment.

In its earnings release, Rakuten reported a net income for 2019 of about 141.9 billion yen which is $1.3 billion – increasing by 28.4% when compared to 2017.