Milestone reached just two years after launch
Total transaction value grows 13.8-fold in 1 year
TOKYO – February 10, 2017 – LINE Pay (http://line.me/pay), a “smartphone wallet” service for the LINE Platform, topped 10 million registered users (not including deleted accounts), as of February 10.
Between January 2016 and January 2017, the number of global users grew 2.8 times, causing LINE Pay to achieve the 10-million-user milestone slightly more than two years after its initial launch. The total value of all transactions performed on LINE Pay grew even faster, rising 13.8-fold year-on-year.
Launched on Dec. 16, 2014, LINE Pay is a mobile payment and money transfer service from LINE Pay Corporation (a subsidiary of LINE Corporation) that enables users to send money easily and conveniently to each other over LINE and to pay for transactions at affiliated stores and on participating services.
Since the launch, LINE has been steadily expanding LINE Pay by working with other companies, increasing the number of affiliated stores, and making the service more convenient to use, as well as continuing to focus on security. In March 2016, LINE began issuing physical LINE Pay Cards in Japan, providing 2% rebates on purchases, distributed via LINE Points.
The card has been enjoying ever-increasing usage, particularly among younger users. One recent event that contributed to this user growth was the LINE New Year's Gift campaign, held between December 27, 2016 and January 3, 2017. During the campaign, users could send each other virtual New Year messages, with each message giving the recipient a chance to receive “lucky money” (per the East Asian tradition of giving money gifts during the New Year holiday) in the form of LINE Pay credit. Convenience was also improved in January of this year with the introduction of a new code payment service at Lawson convenience stores across Japan, allowing users to make purchases simply by showing a code displayed on their smartphone at the register.
LINE is also working to bolster user growth and transaction volume in Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia, with specialized promotions for each market and collaborations with local banks and other payment service providers. Since launching service in Taiwan in August 2015, LINE Pay has partnered with over 400 online and offline shops, and teamed up with CTBC Bank to issue the CTBC Line Pay Infinite Card in December 2016. In Thailand, LINE Pay has been renamed “Rabbit LINE Pay,” due to the local partnership with BSS Holdings Co., Ltd., provider of Rabbit smart cards for mass transit systems and offline e-payment. Starting in January, Thai users can now pay their utility bills via Rabbit LINE Pay. In Indonesia, LINE began collaborating with the nation’s largest bank, Bank Mandiri, in November 2016 to launch LINE Pay e-cash.
The LINE Pay service is part of LINE Corporation’s vision for becoming a wide-ranging “Smart Portal” for people’s lives, serving as a gateway to a world where vast arrays of information and services, both online and offline, are seamlessly connected. Within that vision, LINE Pay connects many of those other lifestyle services, and so LINE will continue to work with banks, expand affiliates, add new features, aggressively provide new campaigns to users, improve convenience and offer more opportunities to use LINE Pay.