Not long ago, it was reported that Alipay entered the Japanese market in 2015 shortly after Chinese tourists wildly purchased Japanese products. In a period of long time, Alipay has been dominated by Chinese consumers in Japan. However, Nikkei News reports that Alipay intends to start the business of cellphone pay by Japanese native users from the spring of 2018.
As a matter of fact, in the past two years Alipay has already started to be used in may places, such as, in the Department stores of Japanese big cities, in Narita Airport, in Lawson convenience stores, twenty-five thousand stores in total, and the number will even arrive to fifty thousand.
Now the only condition that Alipay can be used in Japan is that a Chinese bank account is needed. But in the coming years, it can be operated by binding a Japanese bank account number. According to Ant Jin Japan Plan, Alipay will expand more daily services, such as, buying the movie ticket on line.
In 2017, Alipay’s market scale is expected to be fifteen thousand billion in China while in Japan cellphone pay is blank .Japanese users have the habit of paying in cash. The data of BIS(Bank for International settlements) from Bank of Japan, suggests that in 2015, Japanese families’ cash pay was the highest in the global twenty-four countries surveyed by BIS.
A study, conducted by Nomura Securities, predicts that Japanese cellphone pay in 2017 will arrive to five thousand six hundred billion Japanese yuan. Just because of this, many IT enterprises are paying close attention to the huge potential Japanese market.
Apple company has cooperated with the card of Suica , which is unlimitedly used in the whole country of Japan by Apple Pay. Suica card is similar to BaDa card of Hong Kong,which can be used in public transport as well as in stores while Japanese users of Android need to pay by binding Edy, or Nanaco (seven-eleven convenience electronic currency).
At present, Alipay’s strongest competitor may be Line. In the survey of MMD, Line occupies 85% market share. Line Pay is bonded with Japanese bank card, supporting internal account number transfer. The accumulated points can be used as cash of Line Pay through Line shopping and Line Delima.
As for Alipay entering Japan’s market, Japanese media is very curious about how Alipay, the China’s biggest cellphone pay figure, will change Japan”s cell phone payment.

A propos de Linling TAN