Sumitomo Mitsui Card/Olive and SoftBank Enter Into Digital Partnership

Sumitomo Mitsui Card and SoftBank have signed a basic agreement regarding a comprehensive business alliance in the digital field. Based on this alliance, PayPay Corporation and Sumitomo Mitsui Card will begin new collaborative initiatives.

1. Purpose of This Alliance

In recent years, with the evolution of technology and advancement of digital technologies, many innovative services have been born, including collaborations that transcend industry types and business formats. SMBC Group has established an environment that can provide digital customer touchpoints, mainly through its comprehensive financial service "Olive" for individual customers. "Olive" has been promoting partnerships with top companies inside and outside the group as a next-generation platform that seamlessly provides bank accounts, card payments, securities, insurance, etc. In March 2025, it also launched a "travel" service in the non-financial field, making it increasingly convenient and expansive.

Meanwhile, SoftBank has been providing various services to deliver next-generation social infrastructure essential for the development of a digitized society. In addition to its telecommunications business, it has been expanding various services including financial services, DX/solutions utilizing group companies, and services in entertainment, healthcare, and other areas.

The partners have agreed to combine SoftBank's various services centered on digital technology with SMBC Group's open financial platform to realize advanced and superior digital services with higher convenience and profitability, and to contribute to the acceleration of digitalization and cashless payments in Japanese society.

2. Content of This Alliance

By establishing a comprehensive partnership in the digital field, the companies aim to create overwhelmingly convenient and beneficial cashless services by combining various functions of "Olive" such as bank accounts, card payments, finance, and online securities with a wide range of products and services provided by SoftBank and its group companies in areas including healthcare, AI demand forecasting for retail and food industries, generative AI, and finance, as well as through mutual cooperation between "Vpass," "Olive," and "PayPay."

(1) Partnership with SoftBank

Development of non-financial services in healthcare and other areas within the comprehensive financial service "Olive"

By combining "Olive" with various digital services offered by SoftBank, the non-financial service area of "Olive" will be further expanded, evolving "Olive" into a super app that transcends the boundaries of finance.

As the first step, in fiscal year 2025, a healthcare portal will be newly provided to Sumitomo Mitsui Card credit card members in collaboration with Healthcare Technologies, a SoftBank subsidiary that promotes people's health through data utilization. This will allow "Olive" members to seamlessly use health/medical services through the app and receive support from medical professionals anytime, without time or location constraints. In the future, a wide range of services contributing to health maintenance and promotion will be provided according to the needs of "Olive" members, supporting health promotion and contributing to the optimization of medical expenses.

Furthermore, as a preparation for health, in terms of providing insurance products, the companies will collaborate with Lead X, a SoftBank subsidiary developing InsurTech services, to redesign Sumitomo Mitsui Card's insurance portal and expand its product lineup, making it easier for customers to apply for insurance products that meet their needs through Sumitomo Mitsui Card's digital channels.

Healthcare services will also be extended to Sumitomo Mitsui Card's corporate members, providing packages including healthcare apps, mental counseling, and group compensation insurance to employees, supporting corporate members' health management initiatives.

Advanced data utilization combining payment data and people flow statistics data

Both companies will jointly explore the provision of a new customer analysis tool that combines payment data held by Sumitomo Mitsui Card with people flow statistics data and other external data held by SoftBank and its group companies.

Sumitomo Mitsui Card conducts marketing support utilizing payment data as a merchant business for member stores. Payment data has the characteristic of being able to understand both credit card member attribute data and member store attribute data, having the potential to understand purchasing behavior in detail.

By combining this data with highly detailed people flow statistics data held by Agoop Corporation, a SoftBank subsidiary handling big data business utilizing location information, it becomes possible to analyze the combination of visitation and purchasing trends such as the number of visitors to one's own store and surrounding areas. This enables understanding of unacquired customer segments based on attribute differences between purchasers at one's own store and visitors to surrounding areas, and confirmation of the contribution effect of various measures to customer acquisition and purchases.

Additionally, by analyzing payment data held by Sumitomo Mitsui Card, people flow statistics data held by SoftBank, and external data such as weather and calendar information using AI algorithms developed by SoftBank, it becomes possible to predict future demand in member store locations and their surrounding areas for retail, food service, and other industries.

Furthermore, Sumitomo Mitsui Card provides customer referral services for member stores using V-points, and by combining these, they will provide even more advanced marketing insights and implementation support, primarily for Sumitomo Mitsui Card member stores. Through more multifaceted marketing support, they will further contribute to solving issues related to business strategies, customer analysis, promotions, etc., for business operators.

Creating businesses utilizing generative AI

SoftBank, in anticipation of the arrival of the generative AI era, is working on building AI data centers as infrastructure supporting the AI era and developing large language models (LLM) in-house.

Sumitomo Mitsui Card is also exploring ways to further evolve digital-based services such as "Olive" through fundamental improvement of UI/UX utilizing generative AI and proposal of personalized services.

With this alliance, by combining Sumitomo Mitsui Card's customer base and assets with SoftBank's advanced AI services, they will explore collaboration utilizing AI in all areas with the aim of dramatically improving customer experience in daily usage scenarios.

As the first step in AI collaboration, Sumitomo Mitsui Card's contact center will introduce an autonomous thinking AI service utilizing voice generation AI being developed by Gen-AX, a SoftBank subsidiary that supports corporate business reform with generative AI. By utilizing the company's advanced technology and knowledge, they will realize contact center operations where customers can experience peace of mind and convenience through optimal responses provided by autonomous thinking AI for each individual customer.

(2) Exploring customer-centric collaboration between "PayPay" and Sumitomo Mitsui Card's "Vpass" and "Olive"

In 2024, Japan's cashless payment ratio exceeded the government's target of 40%, reaching 42.8%. In particular, code payments saw annual transaction counts increase by 23% year-on-year, exceeding 11.5 billion transactions, which is more than half of credit card transaction counts, and annual transaction volume reached 13.5 trillion yen, expanding at a dramatic pace in about 6.5 years since PayPay's launch. Additionally, annual credit card transaction volume is approaching 120 trillion yen, covering 80% of the total, making it widely used as the center of cashless payments in Japan.

PayPay, which has surpassed 69 million users (as of May 2025) and holds the No. 1 share in the code payment market, and Sumitomo Mitsui Card, which holds the top share in the domestic credit card market, aim to create an overwhelmingly convenient and beneficial cashless payment service through "PayPay" and "Sumitomo Mitsui Card" by connecting their respective smartphone apps and enabling mutual exchange between "PayPay Points" and "V Points."

Collaboration between PayPay, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Sumitomo Mitsui Card

① PayPay advantages for Sumitomo Mitsui Card

• Continued fee-free use of Sumitomo Mitsui Card-issued credit cards for credit card linked payments in the PayPay app.

② "PayPay" advantages in "Olive"

• PayPay balance checking and charging/withdrawing between Sumitomo Mitsui Bank accounts and PayPay balance will be possible in the Olive app.
• Fee-free withdrawals from PayPay balance to Sumitomo Mitsui Bank accounts.
• Adding PayPay balance as a payment method for Flexible Pay payment mode. Payments using PayPay balance will be possible at Visa member stores worldwide via Olive.

③ Considering mutual exchange between "PayPay Points" and "V Points"

• Accumulate and use points at both PayPay member stores and Visa member stores. Aiming to become the No. 1 point service.

(3) Exploring collaboration in various business areas, including other group companies

In addition to the above initiatives, the companies will jointly advance efforts to connect SoftBank's various areas, such as mobility services (bike sharing, taxi dispatch), with Sumitomo Mitsui Card customers, aiming to create new businesses that transcend the boundaries of finance.

Going forward, Sumitomo Mitsui Card and SoftBank will explore collaboration in diverse fields centered on the above, aiming to solve social issues and provide social value.