SoftBank partners Paytm to launch payments service in Japan

SoftBank Group Corp today said it will launch a digital payments service in Japan, and has partnered Paytm for the service.

The service PayPay will be launched by SoftBank's joint venture PayPay Corporation (with Yahoo Japan) in fall this year, SoftBank said in a statement.

"PayPay Corporation will team up with India's largest digital payments company Paytm, a SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio company, to utilise Paytm's technology and expertise in mobile payments," it added.

In Japan, cash is still the mainstream payment methodology, with the current cashless payment ratio remaining at 20 per cent, SoftBank said adding that the Japanese government is taking measures to raise the cashless payment ratio to 40 per cent by 2025.

To aid these efforts, SoftBank and Yahoo Japan established PayPay Corporation in June this year and will launch its user-oriented payments platform in fall of 2018, it added.

"This will promote the broader use of cashless payment in Japan and provide highly convenient services to both consumers and affiliated stores," SoftBank noted.

"We want to build a Paytm model on local AI that allows us to take mobile payments to a large population where other digital methods have not fully penetrated," Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO - Paytm, said.

Paytm offers seamless mobile payments to over 300 million customers and 8 million merchants in India.