Paytm partners with PayPay to start Japan operations

Indian digital payments major Paytm has now expanded its operations to Japan in partnership with PayPay Corporation, which is a joint holding entity between Japanese telecom major SoftBank and Yahoo Japan.

With this partnership, the company will be installing QR code based payment solutions to digitise consumer retail payments in Japan by the second half of 2018.

"It is an honour to work with Masa Son. He is a visionary entrepreneur who has seen it all: PC, telecom, mobile internet and now Artificial Intelligence, which is the way forward. We want to build a Paytm model on local AI that allows us to take mobile payments to a large population where other digital methods haven’t fully penetrated," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Paytm.

Japan still being a cash dominated economy has only 20% of its transactions happening digitally. With this partnership PayPay will target to double the share of digital transactions by 2025. The partnership will enable Japanese consumers to make payments digitally both to other consumers as well as to merchants. Paytm will be bringing in the QR code solution to scan and pay in Japan, similar to what it has in India.

QR Code payments have become tremendously popular in China as well where payments landscape is dominated by Alibaba and WeChat.

The adoption of PayPay will be pushed up mainly by adding up the customer base of Softbank along with Yahoo Wallet which has approximately 40 million users. Consumers will be able to use the payment service through the PayPay app or the Yahoo Japan app. Through the partnership the company plans to take payment service to retail merchants as well as merchant chains spread across the region.

Customers will also be able to make payments either through electronic money or through credit cards.