Japanese Firms promote business with social responsibility in Asia

Japanese credit card brand JCB issued the first prepaid card in partnership with PVB card corporation and the city of Bacoor in Philippines.

The card launched in collaboration with the government, functions as a citizen identification card in the country.

"Philippines right now are enjoying unprecedented time of prosperity. Moody's just recently gave us the third credit bill to give us the investment grade. Clearly with the medium age of the population coming up to the employment age, who are going to be hitting domestic consumption driven boom, driven primarily by a demographics. At this point of time, the social economic demographics of the Philippines is such that more than 75 percent of our population don't have the bank account. And the credit card penetration is at the best three and a half percent," Simon S. Ung, President and CEO, PVB card corporation said.

"So really what we wanted to do is what's come up with a payment product that address the needs of the upcoming middle class also the under bank sectors of society. Because we understand that for them paying bills, making simple transactions that may take people like us a few key strokes, but for them involves half a day travel and lining up just to pay a bill," Simon added.

JCB will promote this ID and payment card to other major cities such as Manila and Makati in Philippines.

JCB aims to expand its brand presence in Asia by promoting prepaid cards including debit cards, in order to create payment products that meet the various needs of business partners in each region.

"It will also be serving as a vehicle for the government to increase in their efforts to without corruption, increase transparency in account ability to government, by being able to remove cash from the acquirements, and be able to electronically credit and disperse cash to the constituents directly onto the card," Simon Ung further added.

Japanese firms like LIXIL Corporation recently participated in 'The World Toilet Summit 2013' at Solo in Indonesia.

Various non-pro?t organizations, government bodies, academia and industry representatives who participated in the event addressed the prevailing sanitation crisis, which affects 2.5 billion people globally.

Victoria Bolam, Director of Japanese bathroom equipment maker, LIXIL Corporation talked about their social commitment.

"A lot of waste currently in various Asian countries as well as African countries don't have good infrastructure. Unfortunately, even if the waste is collected, it's often dumped into rivers which pollutes people's drinking supplies, and people also often bathe and wash their clothes etc. in the rivers. So the more excrements that's polluting the rivers, the more disease is going to be prevalent in the future. So we really believe that it's an issue that it needs to be tackled, and LIXIL is committed to taking leadership in tackling that," Victoria Bolam said.

Professor Jack Sim, Founder, World Toilet Organization said: "Japanese has the cleanest and highest standard of toilet in the world. Technology comes because of the Japanese culture of 'clean for everything'- Japanese wanted to be very clean, so this culture can be transferred to all over the world, and I think that the reason why it is so prosperous is because, when you have clean culture, you have healthy citizens. And then you have productive citizens because they're not sick, they can produce and the economy become competitive."

The Japanese firms are expanding their businesses, but with a great sense of social responsibility.