The overheated Japanese payments market kicked into consolidation mode with the Line Pay Pay Pay merger announcement last November. The next consolidation was announced today with the Origami Pay startup folding into the the merpay startup. The deal is expected to close by February 25. Now that a market shakeup is in full swing I think we can expect mergers for other smaller players like kyash before the Tokyo Olympics.
It will be interesting to see what comes out of the merger of the QR Code Origami and NFC Apple Pay merpay. Perhaps we might end up with a flexible frontend solution like the recently released Toyota Wallet which combines both approaches. And it seems that the arrival of Toyota Wallet was a big factor that pushed the market into the consolidation cycle we are now witnessing. I just hope the backend is flexible too and not chained to a single banking empire. We shall see.
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