payments
PayPay Corporation announces that four new services used in six countries can now process payments at PayPay merchant locations that use "Alipay+". The newly added services are "K PLUS" (Thailand), "Kaspi.kz" (Kazakhstan), "Bluecode" (Germany, Austria), and "BigPay" (Thailand, Malaysia,
weekly
Welcome to the one hundred seventh edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. While we thought the prior week was extreme, the past week gifted us two of the best 20 return days of the TOPIX, and one of the worst 20.....since 1968! By this point, you will also have
credit card
Nudge has obtained a license as a "Certified Comprehensive Credit Purchase Intermediary" based on the Installment Sales Act. When entering the credit card business as a startup, Nudge initially operated as a "Small-Amount Comprehensive Credit Purchase Intermediary", offering credit cards with limits of 100,000 yen
venture capital
GOLDEN EGG Ventures has completed the formation of GOLDEN EGG Investment Limited Partnership No. 1 with total capital of over 4 billion yen. Eleven financial institutions, eleven non-financial companies, and eight individual investors have participated, and the fund has already begun investing in a number of startups both in Japan
trading
Woodstock, which operates the Gen Z-focused social investment app woodstock.club, has launched a new basket trading feature that allows users to purchase portfolios based on the Woodstock app users' average performance, which outperforms market averages such as the S&P500 and Nasdaq. With this feature, users can
banking
Mizuho Financial Group announced that Amsterdam-based Mizuho Bank Europe, a subsidiary of Mizuho Bank, has merged with Frankfurt-based Mizuho Securities Europe, a subsidiary of Mizuho Securities. As the surviving entity, Mizuho Bank Europe has successfully commenced operations under its new universal bank structure, offering a fully integrated banking and securities
credit card
JCB Cards are now available as a payment method for the App Store and Apple Services in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. Customers can now use their JCB Cards to pay for purchases on the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV app, iTunes, iCloud storage
embedded finance
Digital Garage has decided to launch "Musubell Insurance," an embedded insurance solution that enables online completion of fire insurance applications when purchasing real estate, as a new service of "Musubell," which allows electronic document creation/management and centralized online status management for real estate transactions. This
crypto
In light of the current state of cryptocurrency transactions, the Financial Services Agency has been examining the state of systems related to cryptocurrencies, as outlined in the Financial Administration Policy for Fiscal Year 2024. They have compiled the results of that examination in the form of a discussion paper released
venture capital
FactBase and its group companies announce have raised a total of 1.45 billion yen in Series B round through third-party allotment of shares and share transfers to Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Mizuho Capital, Resona Capital, and others. About Fact Base Under the vision of "Creating an order-receiving platform where
venture capital
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation has concluded an investment agreement with MobiSavi, which operates an EV data utilization business using EV performance prediction technology. In recent years, addressing climate change and environmental issues has become an urgent global priority, and the adoption of EVs is advancing worldwide as a means to
Insurance
MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings has reached an agreement to sell all of its shares in Challenger Limited, an Australian financial services company with annuities and fund management businesses listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, amounting to 15.1% of the issued shares, to a group subsidiary of Dai-ichi