M-payments platform PayPay, a joint venture between SoftBank and Yahoo Japan, has announced it has reached 15 million users of its smartphone payment service. PayPay ended August with 10 million users, 1 million stores, and 100 million transactions. PayPay also reports there are currently 1.5 million merchants that accept PayPay and the transaction number is increasing on a daily basis in line with the increase of number of users and merchants, recording 170 million cumulative transactions since the launch of the service in 2018.
According to PayPay, the rapid growth of its user base was mainly boosted by its Point Reward Project for Consumers using Cashless Payment and PayPay’s ‘Machikado PayPay’ campaign, both which started on 1 October.
PayPay has also announced that, on 5 October, it will conduct a one-day campaign called ‘PayPay Kansha (Thanksgiving) Day’, to celebrate one year sicnce the launch of the PayPay service. A maximum of 20 percent PayPay Bonus will be granted with an upper limit of JPY 1,000 per shopping using PayPay for all users at all merchants that accept PayPay. Additionally, users can receive a full cashback in PayPay Bonus (maximum JPY 100,000 worth) on their transaction, with a once in 50 chance lottery.
SoftBank and Yahoo Japan established PayPay in June 2018 to launch its payments platform in autumn. Paytm ended June 2018 with 300 million m-payments services users and 8 million merchants. Also in 2018, PayPay, SoftBank, Yahoo Japan and Paytm announced plans to expand the number of users by including the customer base of SoftBank, and ‘Yahoo! Wallet’, which comprises around 40 million accounts.
