PayPay was launched in Japan in partnership with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan last October.

PayPay — the QR-based payment arm of Paytm launched in Japan in partnership with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan last October has emerged as the second most preferred cashless payment service after credit cards, according to SoftBank’s Q2 FY19 earnings presentation. Ahead of multiple types of e-money services QR-code settlement, 31 per cent respondents, as per a survey of 2,044 people between October 4-7, 2019, preferred PayPay while 41 per cent opted for credit cards including Visa and JCB to pay cashless. PayPay, apart from payment offering, help users get access to multiple services including food, pharmacy, bill or tax payment, travel-related bookings including flight tickets, hotel, and cab etc., similar to Paytm app’s offerings in India — to turn into a super app.

Data sourced from PayPay into SoftBank’s earnings presentation claimed a hockey stick growth in its number of monthly transactions from roughly around 2 million in January 2019 to 85 million in October 2019, doubling from 42 million in September 2019. Also, its cumulative registered number of users grew to 19 million in 13 months from its launch. In August this year, Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma had tweeted 10 million users. “Thank you India for your inspiration and giving us chance to build world class tech going places !,” he had said.

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The rise of PayPay in Japan comes cash which continues to dominate the country with wireless transactions “including payments by credit cards and smartphone apps, accounting for just under 20 per cent of personal spending,” according to The Japan Times. 80 per cent of the payments made in Japan is through cash while SoftBank had earlier said that the Japanese government is eyeing improving cashless payment ratio to 40 per cent by 2025 and further 80 per cent as the long term goal. The recent survey, according to the SoftBank presentation, also saw increase users intent for cashless payment from 28 per cent in August 2019, to 36 per cent in October while customers who would want to use cash decreased from 23 per cent to 17 per cent in the said period.