Japan Railways Group To Integrate Crypto Assets As Payment Option

The biggest railway operator in Japan, Japan Railways Group announced their consideration of implementing crypto assets as a payment option and this is what we are reading about in our latest altcoin news below.

The railway and subway operator is used by millions of people every day and according to ANN News which is a TV network in Japan, the railway group aims to establish a cryptocurrency company, most likely an exchange that will partner with a major bank in order to integrate cryptocurrencies to its platform.

If the JR Group brings this decision into force, the provider will issue a Suica card which is the national public transport card but a new option will be added to it. This could bring a massive boost for retail and mainstream crypto adoption in the near future.

Based on the ANN news reports, the company is likely to create its own exchange in order to improve the infrastructure for payments processing much like Rakuten. Rakuten is now the biggest e-commerce company in Japan and it acquired a bitcoin exchange for $2 million which now has its subsidiary named Rakuten Payments.

By creating its own platform, JR Group will generate another source of revenue from the transaction fees of the crypto payments. This business model could increase the competition between the crypto trading platforms because they expect the users demand to be significantly higher. It is also likely that the company is considering the integration of the Mizuho Company which is a major financial institution in Japan.

Japan is the perfect market for integrating cryptocurrencies because of the massive crypto awareness.  For example, Bitwise Asset Management showed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that 95 percent of the crypto market trading volume is fake and only a few exchanges provide with real daily volume information. One of those exchanges is BitFlyer which happens to be the largest crypto exchange in Japan.

The largest electronic retailer in Japan has been accepting BTC payments for more than a year now, despite the prolonged crypto winter.

Japan is the second largest crypto market in the world because of its open-minded approach to regulation and blockchain technology adoption.