Mobile payments gaining traction in Japan
Mobile payments are catching on in Japan as retailers respond to demand for new payment systems through smartphones. According to Japanese advertising company Hakuhodo, 31% of respondents it surveyed were interested in smartphone payments, with male users being three times as interested in the tech. The “osaifu-keitai”, or mobile wallet, concept has been in circulation for nearly a decade but has been slow to find acceptance in Japan. As of July 2016, half of mobile users in Japan had used mobile payments. Security is the biggest obstacle, but the convenience of payments and wider acceptance will likely make it more common.

Japanese Shoppers Start Accepting Mobile Payments

February 21, 2017 By: Steven Anderson

It’s hard to believe sometimes, but the Japanese are actually a fairly risk-averse culture. The fax machine, for example, is still a heavily-used business tool there. Mobile payments didn’t exactly catch on there, but there are some signs of change as the Japanese are taking an increasing interest in mobile payments systems.

With more consumers taking an interest, mobile payments are perking up retailers’ interest as well, as the retailers rush to provide the things that customers so clearly want. Word from Hakuhodo, a Japanese advertising firm, is that 31 percent of respondents were interested in bringing the various payment systems together on a smartphone,with male users demonstrating more overall interest.

Males, in fact, were almost three times as interested, with 19.1 percent of males reporting themselves as “very interested” or “somewhat interested,” while female users could only muster 6.9 percent answering likewise. In fact, female respondents were more likely to be “not interested at all,” “not really interested,” and “not interested” than male users in each case.

The idea, sometimes called osaifu-keitai or “mobile wallet,” has been around in some forms for better than a decade, with consumers able to pay for public transit tickets from said wallet as well as being able to store information like loyalty programs or the like. However, that’s expanding, and a Deloitte survey from July 2016 found about half the mobile phone users in the country had already used mobile payment systems.

There’s still some hesitation, though, even if that’s falling away. The biggest problem was security, reports noted, but it’s easy to see the progressions that have come to the field in the meantime. Mobile payments are much safer now than they’ve ever been before, and that’s great news for anyone who’s thinking about making (or taking) payments from a mobile device. Throw in the further benefits of convenience and wider acceptance and there’s a lot more reason for non-users to get in the pool as well.

With better security, even the most risk-averse are willing to give the system a try, and mobile payments are no different. The Japanese are proving as much, and we may see more mobile payments use coming up thanks to a wide body of evidence in play on how to do such things the right way.