The main online payment methods in Japan are credit card payment and mobile phone payment. The Japanese own credit card organization is JCB. JCB cards that support 20 currencies are often used for online payment. In addition, most Japanese people have a Visa and MasterCard. Compared with other developed countries, Japan’s online retail trade with China is not so developed, but offline Japanese consumption in China is quite active, especially for Japanese tourists, who can establish long-term relationships with them through shopping websites. At present, Alipay and Japan SoftBank Electronic Payment have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to provide Alipay’s cross-border online payment services to Japanese companies. It is estimated that with the entry of Alipay into the Japanese market, domestic users who are accustomed to Alipay will use Alipay to directly collect yen in the near future.
The number of people using mobile phones to surf the Internet in Japan has exceeded the number of people using personal computers, and they are also accustomed to using mobile phones for online shopping. Their mobile phones can be used for airport boarding verification, access control keys, transportation cards, credit cards, payment cards, etc. The company that provides technology and software solutions behind these applications is FeliCa, a subsidiary of Sony. The payment phone has a built-in FeliCa payment chip, and the chip is embedded with user identity information and payment data. These chips are provided by Sony together with Renesas and Toshiba.
In addition, an alliance formed by Sony, mobile operator NTT Docomo, and transportation operator JREast is promoting the development of the mobile payment ecosystem. Operators, stores, credit card issuers and mobile phone manufacturers have reached a unified agreement, and FeliCa is responsible for the specific implementation. Now, in several of Japan’s largest cities, about 1.1 million people use Suica phones to buy tickets or purchase goods from vending machines. The reason why the author introduces this in detail is mainly because he thinks mobile payment is a major trend in the future, and we can learn from their experience.