When the baseball season kicked off in Japan this spring, fans of the Tohoku Rak...
TOKYO - When the baseball season kicked off in Japan this spring, fans of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles were faced with an inconvenience they’d never encountered before: the food and drinks stalls did not accept cash.
“We consider it to be a success story,” said Hayato Morofushi, marketing manager for Rakuten’s mobile payments. “Using QR codes for payments has only just started in Japan, so we don’t expect everyone to jump on the bandwagon. As we get more success stories, this will win more people over.” As soon as the tax increase kicks in, the government will offer points redeemable for future discounts to shoppers who use QR codes and other cashless payments for nine months.
Low crime rates - Japanese are comfortable carrying large amounts of cash - and an aging population seen as the main obstacles for deeper adoption. Cashiers spend on average more than two hours a day managing cash, while Japanese banks spend around 1 trillion yen a year on their ATM network and physically moving cash, NRI says.Tourism spending, especially from China, has been one of the few economic bright spots in Japan, and Chinese tourists use the mobile payment system AliPay, run by Ant Financial Services Group, at over 300,000 Japanese merchants.
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