Softbank Corp, Japan’s third-largest mobile-phone company, will form a joint venture with EBay Inc’s PayPal to offer digital payment services in the country.
Softbank and PayPal will each invest ¥1 billion (US$12.5 million) in the venture, to be called PayPal Japan, the companies said in a joint statement yesterday. The new company will offer a service that allows businesses to accept debit-card, credit-card and PayPal payments through smartphones, they said.
The companies are targeting Japan’s 4.7 million small businesses, which can use the service to avoid setting up merchant accounts to collect card payments, Tokyo-based Softbank and San Jose, California-based PayPal said in the statement.
Photo: Reuters
The venture may eventually sell shares to the public, Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son said at a press conference in Tokyo.
“That’s the way both companies can benefit from the business if it succeeds, instead of absorbing profits from the venture,” Son said.
The Japanese retail commerce market, where many transactions are still cash-based, was worth ¥134 trillion last year, according to the statement.
The service’s card reader, to sell for ¥1,200, and an application for Apple Inc’s iPhone were available starting yesterday for “select merchants,” the companies said.
It will become available to others “in the next several weeks,” along with a version for Google Inc’s Android operating system, according to the statement.
PayPal has 110 million active accounts in 190 markets and 25 currencies, while Softbank has 29 million mobile subscribers, according to the statement.
PayPal led global growth in payment network spending in the first quarter of this year, expanding 24 percent, compared with a 13 percent marketwide increase, according to a report on Tuesday by Bloomberg Industries analyst Alison Williams.
Growth outside the US outpaced domestic growth, with PayPal’s 30 percent expansion leading rivals, the report said.
Facing intensifying competition in smartphones, Softbank is trying to lure more customers by improving its network connectivity after winning a license for more bandwidth earlier this year.
KDDI Corp, Japan’s No. 2 carrier, became the second company to sell the iPhone in Japan in October, ending Softbank’s local monopoly on selling the popular devices.
Softbank added 2.11 percent to ¥2,447 in Tokyo trading, extending its gain this year to 7.99 percent. EBay has gained 33 percent on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange this year.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day