Stripe enters Asia with Japan beta launch

It's nice to see Stripe coming here, but I wonder how much demand there really is for it. Many (Japanese) people I know would rather stick to bank transfers and payment at convenience stores than use credit cards. All of our company-to-company business is handled with bank transfers. The only reason we have a credit card is for international transactions, I guess.

On a semi-related side note, I saw Square out in the wild for the first time the other week -- I went to a newish bar and asked the owner if he took credit card; he said he'd bought something and would try it out with my card and it turned out to be Square's dongle, which I've seen in convenience stores here.

I'll be interested to see how well they do. In Japan there is Webpay which is almost a carbon copy of Stripe and was recently bought by Line so now has some clout behind it.

The predominant use of credit cards in Japan is ecommerce / online, which is, of course, Stripe's target market.

Japanese have on average 2.6 credit cards[1] and spend on average about $3000 a year on those cards. So yes, they're used less often than in the US but they have broad adoption.

Japanese people often tell me that Japanese don't like to use credit cards. But ask them, do they have one? (of course! they say), do they use it online? (of course! they say). So it's true in real life, not just in this report.

[1] https://www.j-credit.or.jp/en/reports/

EDIT: Ok, are you willing to predict failure for Stripe in Japan? Or do you just like being negative in a way that can't be tested? Their strategy seems sound to me, and I predict success.

> Japanese people have on average 2.6 credit cards[1] and spend on average about $3000 a year on those cards. So yes, they're used less often but they have broad adoption.

I've never seen a really detailed report that drills down into where people use them. Most people I know with cards will use them (or are forced to use them) for internet/cell phone payments, then pay for anything they buy on their smartphone through the carrier payment system, which is all charged to the card at the end of the month. The phone and plan alone (not counting apps, shopping, etc.) would probably account for $1200 a year on a credit card, which is a significant percentage of the $3000 you're citing and that's not a chunk that Stripe could conceivably take since it's initiated in a real-world transaction at a store and used for e-commerce after that.

I don't know a whole lot of people who actually go around putting their card numbers into sites, especially if they have Rakuten cards -- they just tend to stay in the little convenient walled garden and/or select convenience store or bank transfer payments.

So there are a lot of entrenched "don't worry about it" payment systems that Japanese consumers have already bought into.

> Ok, are you willing to predict failure for Stripe in Japan? Or do you just like being negative?

I'm mostly wondering what Stripe plans to bring to the table in Japan. It's hard to get excited about another online payment processor when online payments here are way easier than I remember them ever being in America. I can order and pay cash for practically anything I want online without worrying about my credit card information being leaked, etc. If I don't want to pay cash for whatever reason, credit cards haven't been difficult to use online; Rakuten makes it just as easy as Amazon does, too. I don't think I've ever had an online shopping experience where I wished there were a simpler payment processor.

I do almost all of my shopping online, so I'd imagine I'm one of the consumers that would potentially be using Stripe, but it's difficult for me to see exactly where it would make my life easier or better. At work, bank transfers are the de facto standard simply for traceability and ease of use.

Edit: Put another way, one of the main problems with American companies trying to come into Japan is that they don't really know what Japan already has to offer or why Japanese people prefer things a certain way, and I'm curious about how Stripe intends to target Japan versus just bringing in an American product and hoping it takes off.

Looks like the hot payment startups are finally getting serious about Asia. Braintree recently launched in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, now Stripe in Japan.

Assuming they will want to avoid wasting resources battling each other the next logical step would be for Stripe to launch in South Korea and for Braintree to launch in Indonesia.