Rakuten Pay, Origami Pay and the soon to be released Docomo ‘d Harai’ are trying to convince Japanese users that QR Code payments are the next big thing. Good luck with that.
As I said before Japanese left QR Codes behind and are not coming back. The latest market survey data from MMD Labs shows that less than 2% of Japanese use QR Code payments. 4% are considering it. 50% could care less, and the rest don’t care either.
However now that there about 1.2 million Chinese living in the Tokyo-Yokohama area alone, I think Rakuten and Docomo are simply servicing their Chinese customers. It would be interesting to see if usage patterns change over time: will long-term Chinese residents drop QR in favor of Japanese FeliCa payment networks?
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