The largest e-commerce entity in Japan, Rakuten is expected to become the country’s first major e-commerce company to integrate cryptocurrency payments onto its platform which will give millions of customers the means to buy products using digital currencies.

The Japanese crypto market is in the perfect position to foster in the merchant adoption of cryptocurrencies thanks to the increased efforts of companies such as the likes of Rakuten and retailers such as Bic Camera who have in the past tested the implementation of digital assets in the past year.

Rakuten and Bic Camera’s Efforts Are Key For Crypto Adoption:

In an official corporate statement published on the 18th of January, Rakuten announced that they are going through company restructure which will include the creation Rakuten Payment, a subsidiary of the entity.

Furthermore, the company also announced that Rakuten Payment would lead the charge of two divisions, namely Everybody’s Bitcoin and Rakuten Edy. Back in August 2018, Rakuten acquired Everybody’s Bitcoin, a local crypto exchange for $2.3 million in order to use the infrastructure of the exchange to implement payments by digital assets on their e-commerce platform.

The company stated at the time:

“We expect that the role of cryptocurrency-based payments in e-commerce, offline retail and in P2P payments will grow in the future. In order to provide cryptocurrency payment methods smoothly, we believe it is necessary for us to provide a cryptocurrency exchange function, and have been considering entry into the cryptocurrency exchange industry as the Rakuten Group.”

During the time of late 2017, Rakuten had more than 95.1 million active registered accounts on their platform. If the e-commerce giant continues on their current trajectory to utilise a crypto exchange to process payments on their e-commerce site, it could very well result in Japan seeing a drastically large level of merchant adoption.

As seen by Bic Camera’s adoption of Bitcoin on their platform, the nation’s largest electronics retailer’s decision has lead to a clear peak in the overall mainstream awareness of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency in the country.

Back in 2018, Masanari Matsumoto, PR & IR Chief of Bic Camera, in an interview told Bitcoin.com that the number of bitcoin payments at their stores was growing at a steady rate.

Matsumoto stated:

“When Bic Camera first installed the Bitcoin payment system in its stores, we expected that the customers paying in Bitcoin would mostly be foreigners. We noticed that Bitcoin was becoming very popular. Then the government announced that Bitcoin was officially legal, so we finally felt more comfortable introducing Bitcoin as a method of payment in our stores. Bic Camera always aims at responding to its customers’ demands, and there was a huge demand at the time.”

What Has Caused The Delay In Merchant Adoption In The Past Year?

Back two years ago in 2017, there was mass hype surrounding companies such as Steam, Microsoft and a myriad of other leading merchants who were considering the adoption of digital currencies into their businesses.

Some did in fact experiment with cryptocurrency payments for short periods of time, but for the most part, many firms were criticised and put under pressure by their clientele due to the inefficiency found when using digital assets to complete transactions.

Notably, when the price of Bitcoin peaked to its all-time high of $20 000 in late 2017, many users complained about issues when transacting due to the strained mempool, a system which is utilised by the BTC network in order to store temporary transactions before they are added to blocks.

Going into 2019 and beyond, as efforts are made to improve the scalability and speeds of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, these efforts made by large corporate entities such as the likes of Rakuten and Bic Camera could very well lead to the mass adoption of digital currencies by merchants.

Currently, the cryptocurrency sector in Japan and beyond is still far behind with regards to mainstream adoption, but things are beginning to look better. Let us know what your thoughts are by leaving a comment below.

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