TOKYO, March 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Nihon PayPal KK (President and CEO: Hiroaki Kitano), SoftBank Mobile (President and CEO: Masayoshi Son) and PayPal Pte Ltd (Vice President, Asia Pacific: Rohan Mahadevan) announce a full-scale expansion of PayPal Here, a global mobile payment solution from PayPal Pte Ltd, to small businesses and entrepreneurs through over 2,700 SoftBank retail shops and business sales networks across Japan.
PayPal Here enables mobile payment services anytime and anywhere for small businesses and entrepreneurs using a fully-encrypted thumb size card reader and free smartphone application. With PayPal Here, merchants no longer have to go through an often very challenging and time-consuming process to get a merchant account to collect credit card payments. With no setup or monthly fees, they can focus on maximizing their sales opportunity by offering credit card and PayPal payments to their customers. PayPal Here encrypts card information as it swipes and all transactions are backed by PayPal's world-class security and fraud prevention capabilities as well as live customer support.
This full-scale expansion also includes several new related services and products for merchants to enhance the use of PayPal Here in their business operations:
Nihon PayPal KK will continue to promote the cashless shopping trend for Japanese consumers, while supporting merchants to accept credit card and PayPal payments through PayPal Here. In fact, many small businesses and entrepreneurs, such as retail shops, F&B outlets and service providers, throughout Japan are already using PayPal Here to increase their sales by offering additional payment options to their customers.
Below are several comments from merchants using PayPal Here today:
"After we started using PayPal Here at exhibitions and show rooms, 90% of our sales came through credit cards via PayPal Here. When customers find out that they can use their credit cards, they feel more comfortable when choosing and purchasing products. As a result, both unit sales price and total sales volume have increased," commented Mr. Hiroyuki Miyazaki, CEO of Aquarylis, an all hand crafts jewelry shop that sells high quality genuine stone jewelry at exhibitions in Tokyo and Osaka, as well as through face-to-face sales opportunities.
"After introducing PayPal Here, it is a more convenient way to pay for customers and we are able to grow our sales by offering more payment choice to our customers. Although the transaction fee cost is 5% of sales, the amount of lost business by not offering credit card acceptance is higher", commented Mr. Daisuke Tanaka, CEO of Uniginal Ltd., managing company of Milton Coffee Roastery which is a cafe located in south of Yamaguchi prefecture.
"PayPal Here has no monthly charge and an easy transaction process, so we are happy to recommend our customers to pay via credit card. Also, our sales team comments that PayPal Here enables credit card payments at sales visits to yoyo competitions and exhibition events. Moreover, sales from our online and physical stores can be completed through PayPal, an easier way to manage overall sales transactions for our business," commented Mr. Masahiro Noma, CEO of YoYo Company which has a yoyo shop called Rewind located in Aichi prefecture selling a range of popular yoyos to professional models for world competitions.
"Originally, we have considered other credit card payment options, but they had high initial costs, time consuming registration process, and long cash collection period of once or twice a month. So we chose to use PayPal Here instead, and 3 weeks after we started we saw that payments via PayPal Here have already grown 10%. More importantly, customers would purchase additional products because they can pay by credit cards," said Thomas Bertrand, owner of Bento&Co which provides stylishly designed Japanese bento boxes and kitchen utilities in a physical shop in Kyoto.
About PayPal Here
Already launched in USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia, PayPal Here is a mobile solution that allows small businesses to accept multiple forms of payments using a free mobile app and a fully-encrypted thumb-sized card reader. PayPal Here enables anyone with an iPhone or Android device to accept credit/debit cards and PayPal payments on-the-go, while getting fast access to their funds through their PayPal account. By offering additional payment options to their customers, small businesses can maximize their sales and Japanese consumers can ease their reliance on cash and conveniently use their credit cards at more retail locations. For more information, please visit http://mb.softbank.jp/biz/service/paypal.
About PayPal
PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online, via mobile devices and in store. The service allows people to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. With more than 123 million active accounts*2 in 190 markets and 25 currencies*1 around the world, PayPal enables global commerce. PayPal is an eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) company. PayPal is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and its international headquarters is located in Singapore. More information about the company can be found at https://www.paypal.jp.
*1: 21 currencies available in Japan
*2: Active account is an account which had a transaction via PayPal more than once in past 12 months
Note: Available on iPhone, iPad, iPad mini (requires iOS4.0 and newer) and multiple Android™ devices (requires 2.3 and newer)
Media Contacts
| Dickson Seow | Rebecca Lansdell |
| PayPal Asia Pacific | The Hoffman Agency |
| Tel: +65-6510-6463 | Tel: +852-2231-8103 |
| Email: dseow@paypal.com | Email: rlansdell@hoffman.com |
