Unified Commerce: Stripe Terminal Launches in Japan
Financial services and SaaS giant Stripe has announced the introduction of Stripe Terminal to merchants in Japan, aiming to increase unity with online and offline payment management.
Business executives in Japan gathered for the annual conference, Stripe Tour Tokyo, which showcases Stripe’s latest features.
Stripe Terminal also offers the latest hardware, Reader S710, with cellular connectivity. This enables merchants to accept payments with no interruption, removing worries around relying on unstable wifi connection.
Terminal will support Tap to Pay, allowing merchants efficiency in accepting payments through iPhones and Android devices.
Leading QR code company in Japan, PayPay, in addition to Weixin Pay (WeChatPay) have also been integrated into Stripe Terminal in addition to its support for Tap to Pay.
Products based on demand
Stripe Terminal offers solutions based on data conducted by the company in collaboration with YouGov earlier this year.
Stripe and YouGov surveyed 2,330 business owners and senior decision makers from companies of varying sizes across Japan, Singapore, China and India.
Businesses surveyed had expertise in sales and commerce, finance and technology.
Questions asked by the survey included topics such as business sentiment and strategic priorities, as well as challenges in areas such as cross-border commerce, payments and AI adoption.
Survey reports indicate that close to 80% of Japanese businesses operating online and in-person feel there are hidden costs associated with managing multiple payment systems.
A further 70% of businesses have admitted to struggling with generating insights from fragmented payments data.
Stripe’s Terminal aims to address these challenges directly by reducing operational complexity for merchants with its online and in-person payments management in one place, providing a unified customer view and simplified reporting.
One of Stripe Terminal’s early customers, mobile battery sharing service Inforich, is implementing the system later this year to its 55,000 locations nationwide.
Yuki Hashimoto, Japan CEO of Inforich says: “Stripe is invaluable as we aim for global expansion.
“We were attracted to the globally unified development module and the multilingual support. The trust from our developers and Stripe’s positive reputation were decisive factors in our adoption.”
Stripe Tour Tokyo: further highlights
Expansion plans from the company include geographic strategy, fraud detection and the introduction of Stripe Startups.
Stripe will support Japanese business to grow into South Korea.
Popular payment methods such as Never Pay, Samsung and PAYCO wallets will be supported by Stripe, in addition to other local cards such as Hyundai Card, Samsung Card and Shinhan Card.
Also announced was the results of Stripe Radar, technology built into Stripe that uses machine learning to make informed decisions to detect and block fraud.
Stripe Radar’s 3D Secure 2 has improved authorisation rates by 25%.
The final announcement from the company is the introduction of Stripe Startups.
Aimed at helping venture start-ups, the programme offers resources to a range of financial business types such as AI-backed businesses, Banking–as-a-Service, Crypto, Marketplace, Software-as-a-Service and E-commerce.
The support includes tailored advice and recommendations and a specialist community to help scale growth.
Stripe’s recent strategy
Targeting global expansion, the company recently announced a partnership with Visa to create the Bridge-Visa card as part of a strategy to increase stablecoin usage globally.
Neetika Bansal, Head of Money as a Service, Stripe said at the time: “We will support any business that wants to issue their own stablecoin, and it primarily comes down to demand. Whoever wants to issue a stablecoin can use Bridge infrastructure to help them do that.”
Businesses could become more receptive to stablecoin after reports have emerged that multiple fintech champions are adopting technology to further facilitate stablecoin.
