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 …

Five more cryptocurrency exchanges have joined the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), according to an official announcement on Jan. 4 from the JVCEA. The JVCEA is a self-regulatory body formed in April by 16 registered crypto exchanges that aims to create industry-wide investor safety standards. In October, Japan’s financial regulator formally granted self-regulatory status to the JVCEA to oversee the crypto sector. The body, made in part as a response to the January 2018 $534 million hack of crypto exchange Coincheck, had released a set of regulatory guidelines in June, including a ban on insider trading and prohibition against …

Japanese messaging app provider LINE Corporation announced that its newly-developed LINK (LN) token is now tradeable on its native BITBOX cryptocurrency exchange in a press release Tuesday, October 16. LINE, which launched BITBOX in July, will offer trading against three cryptocurrency assets – Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) – out of a total of thirty currently available on the exchange. BITBOX does not offer fiat trading. In future, LN holders will be able to spend their holdings in LINE’s decentralized application (DApp) system, also currently under development, the press release notes. “We're very pleased that users are now …