PayPal Here Expands in Japan to Enable More Small Businesses to Succeed

March 5, 2013

Hi everyone,
When we joined forces with SoftBank in Japan last year, we said that we wanted to transform commerce in Japan and we were going to start first with PayPal Here. We have had a lot of progress since then to bring PayPal Here to the Japanese market and the response from local businesses has been fantastic. We’ve been selling PayPal Here through SoftBank stores since the fall of 2012 and have gathered valuable feedback from thousands of merchants using PayPal Here to steadily improve the customer experience and provide the highest quality product for the Japanese market.

The great news is that PayPal Here is now widely available in more than 2,700 SoftBank retail shops and through their business sales network across Japan, meaning that we can more effectively reach more than 4.2 million small businesses in Japan of which 80% do not yet accept credit card transactions. If we’re going to spark the commerce revolution in Japan, let’s start by helping to boost the small business sector which accounts for 90% of all businesses and 70% of employment in Japan.
The Japanese version of the PayPal Here merchant app for Android is now available, too. By covering the two most popular smartphone platforms in Japan, iOS and Android, we can help even more small businesses start using PayPal Here to accept credit card and PayPal payments to increase their sales. Any Japanese merchant or entrepreneur can walk into a SoftBank retail shop today to see the full range of iOS and Android devices certified for use with PayPal Here.

We’ve worked hard to be the first to make this type of simple, secure mobile payment solution widely available in Japan. We’ve listened closely to the needs of the local business community to make PayPal Here more useful for them. And we’re thrilled to support thousands of small business owners all over Japan – retail shops, F&B outlets, and service-related businesses – to more easily offer cashless payment options anytime, anywhere to their customers and never have to miss a sale again.
We truly believe that PayPal Here is a game-changer for small businesses. We thank all of them for their support and we’re inspired by their success in using PayPal Here to grow their business. Below are some photos of PayPal Here in action in Japan. Together, PayPal and SoftBank are connecting Japanese businesses and consumers in new ways and creating more opportunities for everyone.
–Rohan Mahadevan, VP of Asia