Netstars Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Chuo-ku, Tokyo; Tsuyoshi Ri, Representative Director & President; hereinafter “Netstars”) announced today that it has reached an agreement with Matsumoto Kiyoshi Holdings Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Matsudo City Chiba; Kiyoo Matsumoto, CEO; hereinafter “Matsumoto Kiyoshi HD”) to start the mobile payment service “Alipay” for Chinese consumers utilizing the mechanism of the multi-payment platform “StarPay” deployed by Netstars. The mobile payment service “Alipay” will be released on October 30, 2018 at about 1,600 nationwide stores operated by Matsumoto Kiyoshi HD including drug store chain “Matsumoto Kiyoshi”. This will make it even more convenient for Chinese inbound visitors to Japan to enjoy their shopping.
“Alipay” provided by Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, is the world’s largest mobile and online payment platform. With more than 700 million active users of Alipay in China, Alipay provides offline payment services for Chinese overseas in 40 countries and regions. In recent years, the number of foreign inbound visitors to Japan has been on the rise, and in 2017 it was 28.69 million, an increase of about 3.4 times that of 10 years ago, and among them, Chinese inbound visitors to Japan accounted for about 26% of the total. Since mobile payment services are widespread in China, the lifestyle of making payments using smartphones has been becoming more common rather than carrying cash around. In Japan as well, the move toward cashless has been accelerating, as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has formulated a “cashless vision”.
Netstars has developed a multi-payment platform “StarPay” that specializes in QR code payments and has been acquiring member stores in Japan. In 2015, Netstars started the fintech business as Japan’s first “WeChat Pay” acquirer and started “LINE Pay” from October 2017 and “Alipay” from June 2018. Netstasrs promotes the popularization of “StarPay” as a multi-payment platform that supports all domestic and overseas QR code payments.
This time, the provision of the Alipay service to Matsumoto Kiyoshi HD has been realized based on the collaboration with Netstars collaborator, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, and Netstars will continue to provide payment services that can be used on the multi-payment platform “StarPay”. While expanding, Netstars will accelerate the development of member stores for the spread of cashless payments in Japan.
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Netstars Co., Ltd. : Morita
E-mail: sales-dept@netstars.co.jp
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