Japan FinTech Observer | Tontines | ex-Goldman & Barclays Tech MD
lending
Mumbai-based digital lending startup Zype has raised Rs 90 crore ($10.2 million) in a fresh funding round led by Japanese venture capital firm Unleash Capital Partners. Existing investor Xponentia Capital also participated in the round. This round comes after the 2022-founded startup raised its first major institutional round of
lending
Debt collections is the backbone of lending, however collections today are run by collection agencies who care very little about the borrower and mostly care about their commissions. With a vision to build India’s best collections company, DPDzero has announced raising $7million in Series-A funding led by GMO VenturePartners
Weekly
Welcome to the one hundred twenty-third edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. Earnings season is in full swing, and there were plenty of announcements last week, so we would just like to draw your attention to the Japan Fair Trade Commission's guidelines for smartphone apps - coming into
banking
Mizuho Financial Group has delivered a nuanced set of results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 (ending June 30, 2025), characterized by a stark divergence between its core business segments and a surprisingly bullish revision to its full-year guidance. While Profit Attributable to Owners of Parent posted a
artificial intelligence
NTT Data Corporation has concluded a sales agent agreement with Lazarus AI, which provides multimodal LLM products available in closed network environments, particularly to the life insurance industry, and property insurance industry, and is also a participant in Plug and Play Japan's Summer 2025 InsurTech Batch. Starting in
artificial intelligence
Salesforce Japan announced that The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ has selected the autonomous AI agent "Agentforce for Financial Services" specialized for the financial industry. This case represents Japan's first implementation of Agentforce for Financial Services. The Agentforce for Financial Services selected by Mitsubishi UFJ Bank this
banking
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) has commenced the fiscal year ending March 2026 with a robust first-quarter performance, characterized by strong underlying fundamentals in its core domestic operations. The group reported a Profit Attributable to Owners of Parent of ¥376.9 billion, a modest increase of 1.5% year-over-year (YoY)
core banking
CC Innovation, a group company of Hokkoku Financial Holdings, has decided to license the next-generation core banking system currently being developed for Hokukoku Bank from January 2028, as well as various subsystems developed and utilized in-house, to regional financial institutions outside the group. CC Innovation will also begin providing migration
asset management
SBI Sumishin Net Bank and FOLIO, a subsidiary of FOLIO Holding that provides innovative financial solutions within the SBI Group, have concluded a "Basic Business Partnership Agreement" for the purpose of jointly developing new asset management services for SBI Sumishin Net Bank customers. The launch of the new
crypto
Just like for this fiscal year (see link at the bottom), the Japan Cryptoasset Business Association (JCBA), jointly with the Japan Virtual and Crypto assets Exchange Association (JVCEA), has compiled a tax reform request for cryptoassets for FY2026 and submitted it to the government. Purpose of This Request Web3.0
payments
Infcurion has announced that its group company Link Processing has begun full-scale implementation of the cashless payment solution "Anywhere D135" on rear seat tablets deployed by GO Corporation, which provides the taxi app "GO". The rear seat tablets will undergo full-scale implementation from this summer and
banking
GMO Aozora Net Bank and the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Engineering Morikawa-Narisue Laboratory have officially launched joint research towards the construction of innovative credit risk assessment models utilizing AI and machine learning. In other news, TRABOX has launched a new service called "Finto Invoice Payment", which