Japan’s LINE Pay and Visa Partner on New Blockchain, Digital Payments Solutions

Published at: June 6, 2019

LINE Pay Corporation, the operator of fintech services on major Japanese messaging app LINE, is partnering with American payment services firm Visa on new blockchain and digital payments solutions. The news was revealed in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on June 6.

As of Q4 2018, there were an estimated 1.66 billion Visa debit cards and 781 million credit cards in circulation worldwide. According to today’s press release, LINE counts 187 million global users monthly, with an estimated 50 million users registered its mobile payment service, Line Pay.

The two firms’ strategic partnership will reportedly herald cooperation on a wide range of services, notably including the development of new fintech solutions powered by blockchain technology that support business-to-business and cross-border payments, as well as alternative currency transactions.

In addition, LINE users will be able to apply for a digital Visa card from within the app, and be able to integrate existing Visa cards to make mobile-based payments in the future.

The firms have further announced plans to roll out new merchant-focused solutions, with support for various LINE Pay services to be rolled out at Visa’s 54 million merchant locations globally. Even where LINE Pay is not directly accepted, the press release notes that users will be able to track their merchant transactions using their LINE Pay digital wallet.

The LINE Pay digital wallet will see heightened interaction with Visa-based services in a bid to foster the growth of globally interoperable payments, the press release outlines.

As reported, David Chaum — a trailblazing American cryptographer who invented a secure, privacy-preserving digital currency back in 1982 — has recently said that he believes the real killer app for blockchain and crypto will be messaging systems integrated with payments.

Japan’s LINE — which rolled out its own cryptocurrency in late summer 2018 — has continued to develop its token ecosystem, based on the firm’s in-house service-oriented blockchain, LINK Chain. The blockchain network also enables decentralized applications to be directly applied to LINE’s messaging platform.

Visa — which has officially downplayed the competition posed to its market dominance by crypto innovators — has nonetheless begun to pursue various crypto-related strategies.

This spring, Visa partnered with major American crypto exchange Coinbase on a debit card powered by United Kingdom-based customers’ Coinbase account crypto balances. The firm has also recently published a crypto and blockchain-related job opening, seeking a Technical Product Manager at Visa Fintech in Paolo Alto.

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