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TOKYO: The Japanese chat application operator Line will create a bank with Mizuho Financial Group and is also partner of the Chinese company Tencent to offer mobile payment services: plans that have seen its stock increase by 13% Tuesday (November 27th).
Line has announced plans to open a bank, pending regulatory approval, which will provide financial services to its nearly 80 million users. by 2020. It will be 49% owned by Mizuho.
Line added that Japanese retailers offering Line Pay services would be able to process payments from Chinese tourists with the help of Tencent's WeChat Pay from the beginning of next year.
The changes come as Line looks for other sources of revenue to offset the stagnation in the number of users of its eponymous flagship application, and extends to areas such as payments, securities trading, insurance and crypto -monnaies.
The news of the mergers has boosted Line's stock by almost 13%, adding about one billion US dollars to the company's market value. The stock is still down more than 16% this year.
The shares of Mizuho and Tencent were stable. Tencent shares have lost more than 25% this year, penalized by prolonged regulatory repression against gambling, its core business.
With the growing number of Chinese tourists, Japan is attracting more and more Chinese titans, with Ant Financial, the subsidiary of the Alibaba group, and the group Didi Chuxing, a provider of mobile services, who have announced their services in recent months .
Japan has been slow to opt for cashless payments, with an influx of entrants such as PayPay, supported by SoftBank Group Corp, and Line Pay encouraging consumers to use QR code payments, which have spread to China. , in India and elsewhere.
(Report by Sam Nussey and Taiga Uranaka, additional report by Chang-Ran Kim, edited by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing)
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