Use of UnionPay App Made Easier with 100,000+ Japanese Merchants Accepting UnionPay QR Payment

2020-09-04

UnionPay International (UPI) announced today that it has reached cooperation with Recruit, a well-known Japan-based Internet company, to enable a large number of registered merchants to accept the UnionPay QR payments. As a result, more than 100,000 merchants in Japan will support the service. Thanks to this cooperation, users of the UnionPay App as well as hundreds of UnionPay-powered e-wallet products around the world will be able to pay quickly and easily with QR codes. In a post-pandemic era, this will improve the payment experience of tourists in Japan, and Japanese merchants will be able to acquire new customers more effectively.

Since the beginning of this year, UPI has cooperated with Recruit and other prominent institutions in Japan to improve UnionPay card acceptance, effectively driving coverage to 70% in the country in general and over 90% in Tokyo and Osaka in particular. In addition, UnionPay is included in the “JPQR” Promotion Project as one of the participating payment companies. The UnionPay QR payment, therefore, is adopted by tens of thousands of local merchants including consumer favorites such as duty-free stores at Haneda Airport and LOFT stores.

As the Japanese government plans to gradually relax its entry restrictions, UPI expands cooperation with Recruit to enable more local merchants to accept UnionPay QR payment. Most of these merchants are in Tokyo, Kyoto and other popular tourist destinations and cover a variety of sectors such as food and beverage, supermarkets, retail, and beauty and skincare. The enablement of a large number of distinctive small and medium-sized stores contributes to more diverse use cases in Japan for users of the UnionPay App and other UnionPay-powered e-wallets.

Currently, the UnionPay acceptance network has been extended to 179 countries and regions, 61 of which have enabled UnionPay mobile payments, allowing cardholders to pay with UnionPay QR code or make tap-and-go payments after adding their cards to mobile wallets. Since the beginning of this year, another seven countries including Germany, France, Spain, and Italy have enabled UnionPay QR payment acceptance, bringing the number of economies outside Mainland China supporting this service to 40. The merchants that accept the QR codes cover all sorts of use cases, such as retail, public transit, and food and beverage.

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