Japan’s PayPay mobile payment App makes more than 2 billion payments a year

Japan is the world’s third largest economy and fourth largest e-commerce market, with $115 billion in online retail sales in 2020. However, online retail only accounts for 10% of total retail sales in Japan, so there is still a lot of room for growth.

Done in the field of science and technology in Japan as a developed country, natural need not say more, Internet usage and smartphone penetration is now among the world’s highest, but earlier mobile payment like qr code pay no cash payment is not common in Japan, even large supermarkets and medical clinics insist on cash payment, refused to charge.




Digital payments are so popular in China that some merchants have stopped accepting paper money. But Japan is following the lead of other countries in pushing for cashless payments. Last year, the Japanese government announced that it would double the share of digital payments to 40% of total transactions by 2025.

In recent years, Japan has seen a number of cashless payment options, and many QR code payment applications are pushing for growth by relying on user discounts and lower investment costs and eliminating transaction fees for merchants.

Under the circumstances of the spread of COVID-19 infection and the huge impact on Japan, reducing the use of paper money and promoting electronic money is still the trend of payment transactions in Japan.




Recently, Japan’s mobile payment giant PayPay released some relevant data. Even under the influence of the new crown break, the number of registered PayPay users, the number of connected stores and the number of payments have steadily increased.

From April 2020 to March 2021, more than 2 billion payments were made using PayPay in a year in Japan, 2.5 times the 800 million payments made in the previous year. In particular, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the total number of times in three months exceeded 600 million, 1.6 times the number in the same period last year.



Starting from November 2020, the PayPay mobile payment app began to offer “PayPay Coupons”, which allow member stores to set the award of PayPay bonuses at will. Users just need to get coupons on the “PayPay” app in advance, and when they make a payment with “PayPay” in the target stores, they can automatically get a payPay red envelope offer.

The service has been well received by many users because it is easy to earn money. By the end of March 2021, the number of users using PayPay coupons had reached more than 2.8 million since the offer began in November 2020.

For the franchised stores, the “PayPay coupon” is used to target more than 38 million PayPay users across the country, and the effective policy is implemented. As a result, the number of PayPay member stores continues to grow, reaching more than 3.16 million as of April this year.

It comes after Japan’s mobile payment app PayPay said in late March that it had registered an average of 42,000 new accounts per day since its service was launched on October 5, 2018, rising to 25 million in 2020 and more than 35 million in 2021, with PayPay handling more than 1 billion transactions. By implementing events such as the “Super PayPay Festival”, PayPay now has more than 38 million registered users.

This figure, in the opinion of the editor, is still considerable. After all, less than half a month from the end of March to now, the number of registered users of the PayPay mobile payment application has increased by nearly 3 million registrations. For Japan, which has a small population, the growth rate of PayPay mobile payment is quite fast.

“PayPay will also provide users and all retail stores and service providers with the convenience of cashless payments in the future, with the goal of making cashless purchases anywhere in the country with confidence,” the Japanese mobile payment company said after announcing the figures. Japan’s SoftBank Corp, parent of the PayPay mobile payment app, aims to double the number of users of its PayPay QR code payment app in the next three to four years to cement its lead in cashless payments, according to public reports.