Stripe announces an industry-first partnership with JCB and doubles down on its Japanese operations

<figure><img src="https://imgix.cosmicjs.com/c773eb70-ad5e-11f1-88c6-910437611bfe-newsroom-news-accelerating-in-japan.png" alt="Accelerating Japan"></figure>

• An industry-first partnership with JCB

• A new engineering office in Tokyo

• A further investment in the local team to support growing demand from Japanese businesses

TOKYO—Stripe, the online payment infrastructure provider powering Amazon, Facebook, Shopify, Zoom Video Communications, Slack, and millions of businesses across 39 countries, today announced several ambitious investments in Japan to accelerate the offline to online transition of the economy and help Japanese firms export globally.

An industry-first partnership with JCB

Stripe and JCB have worked hand in hand to deepen the partnership, first announced in 2018, and offer industry-first features at a time when businesses need them the most:

• Automated onboarding on JCB: Stripe will be the fastest way for a business to accept online payments with JCB, whether they are a marketplace using Connect, a SaaS platform using Billing, or an online store using Checkout. It will now only take a few days (versus weeks previously) for businesses to offer JCB to more than 136M cardholders in Japan and other Asian markets, setting a new industry standard.

• Fastest pay-out cycle in Japan: Eligible Stripe-powered businesses can have access to JCB funds in their account in a matter of days versus the industry standard of one month at a time when access to funds is more critical than ever in the supply chain.

• Global JCB acceptance: Millions of businesses on Stripe in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, (with more to come soon) will now be able to instantly accept payments from JCB cardholders, making international commerce much more accessible between Japan, other Asian markets and the rest of the world.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to partner with Stripe, one of the fastest moving technology companies in financial services,” said Mr. Shioda, Executive Vice President, Head of Global Acceptance & Marketing Headquarters at JCB. “Through this partnership, we expect to dramatically enhance access to JCB by International businesses and consumers.”

A new engineering office in Tokyo

Today, Stripe announced the opening of an engineering office in Tokyo, which will focus on building more features and capabilities to meet the specific needs of Japanese businesses. This includes supporting additional domestic payment methods at scale, such as bank transfers and Konbini payments. The team will also focus on bringing new Stripe products to the market at an accelerated pace.

“Stripe has long been the best payments platform for fast growing Japanese businesses and for international companies wanting to operate in Japan,” said Daniel Heffernan, Representative Director and Head of Engineering for Stripe in Japan. “It’s the most robust, secured and fastest innovating payments infrastructure in the world. Building a local engineering team will help us open up more monetization opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Japanese businesses.”

A further investment in the team to support the growing demand from Japanese businesses

Stripe’s momentum continues to gather pace globally in 2020 with fast growing businesses seeing unprecedented spikes in demand (Instacart, Slack, Shopify, Mixi, Medley, AWA, Cookpad), and established companies responding quickly to surges in demand (e.g: ANA, DeNA) or expanding their online business (e.g: Muji in Australia).

To support this growing momentum in the enterprise space, Stripe today announced the hiring of Apple veteran Daisuke Aranami as Representative Director and Head of Revenue and Growth for Stripe in Japan. Under his leadership, Stripe will invest in its go-to-market team to address the increasing demands of Japanese Enterprises.

“Amid the current disruption, where several years of offline-to-online migration are being compressed into a few months, established Japanese businesses are being forced to quickly rethink their business model, and look for new monetization opportunities. Stripe offers solutions that provide ease of use and speed with no compromises on stability or security,” said Daisuke Aranami, Representative Director of revenue and Head of growth for Stripe in Japan. “We’re obsessed about helping businesses innovate faster and we believe now is not the time to pull back, but to invest even more heavily in Stripe’s presence in Japan.”