Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-ninth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. This edition, and the magical 100th edition next week, bracket one of the world's largest crypto conferences held in a suburb of Shenzhen. While we still have to spot the Energizer Bunny Steve Vallas hopping around the island,
security token
Toyota Financial Services, Toyota Finance, Daiwa Securities, MUFG Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking, and Progmat plan to issue the Toyota Group's first publicly offered security token bonds. Toyota Financial Services and Toyota Finance have developed financial services to allow each and every customer to drive their car
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-eighth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. The past week saw the peak of earnings season for the financial sector, generally with very good to exceptional results for most players, including the FinTech segments of platforms like LY Corporation and Mercari; the only exception being cooperative Norinchukin
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-seventh edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. Here you can view the future of Japan: Musashino University's Entrepreneurship Musashino Campus (EMC GLOBAL) held its academic year-end event and pitch contest, also including regional winners from the Philippines, Singapore, and India. The quality of the pitches
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-sixth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. Here is what we are going to cover this week: * Venture Capital & Private Markets: JAL & Hitachi participate in BeZero Carbon's USD 32m Series C; Z Venture Capital & Decima Fund participate in Vivident's seed
payments
The Financial System Council's Working Group on Payment Services has published its key findings and recommendations today. The report addresses emerging issues in the Japanese FinTech landscape, focusing on payment and settlement services, crypto-assets, stablecoins, and other related topics. It proposes several regulatory adjustments to balance innovation with
NFT
NTT Digital has launched the “Hapiwell Ouendan (Happy & Wellness Cheering Team)” campaign in collaboration with 22 partner companies. Themed “Happy & Wellness,” this campaign is led by Sanrio’s popular unit “HAPIDANBUI” as the cheer captain, with participating companies joining as cheering team members to make the campaign more
blockchain
Kaia has integrated Fireblocks, an enterprise platform to manage digital asset operations and build innovative businesses on blockchain. The collaboration enables institutions to securely manage and transfer assets on the Kaia blockchain network, offering enhanced capabilities in tokenization, DeFi, and blockchain-based financial products. Fireblocks brings improved operational efficiency, reduced asset
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-fifth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. Thank you for all the well wishes. We are back, and so is Ueda-san, who is going to raise the policy rate to 0.5% this week. It simply has to happen, notwithstanding any nonsense coming out of Washington prior
crypto
Metaplanet's positioning as the "Japanese MicroStrategy" is quite well understood at this point. CEO Simon Gerovich laid out their strategy very clearly during the WebX 2024 conference: Enter Remixpoint, a new player who has been actively investing in cryptocurrencies. The company initially invested 5 billion yen
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-fourth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. We apologize for the tardiness of this week's newsletter. Let's just say the editorial team has been...decimated. Not by alien invaders (though with this cough, I wouldn't rule it out), but by a
Weekly
Welcome to the ninety-second edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. We would like to express our gratitude for your support and enthusiasm in growing our subscriber count by 44% this year, and wishing you a fulfilling year of the snake. The Nikkei closed the year up 19.22%, setting a