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日本のコンビニでお弁当を買うのは、もはやレジを通すだけではありません。タップしたり、ポイントを貯めたり、部分決済をしたり、お財布にお金を入れたり、時にはお会計をしたり。便利そうに見えて、もっと大きな何かが形作られているのでしょうか？金融は、ほとんど気づかれることなく、日常の小売業に入り込んでいます。.
This shift is powered by embedded finance. In simple terms, it means non-financial companies offering banking, lending, payments, or insurance through technology integrations. The bank still exists in the background, but the experience lives inside the retailer’s app or store. APIs and banking-as-a-service make this possible without turning retailers into full banks overnight.
Japanese retailers are not stopping at cashless payments. They are building full economic ecosystems around daily habits. High-frequency touchpoints, strong brand trust, and constant data flow give them an edge banks struggle to match. The result is a quiet transfer of value. Revenue once owned by banks is now being captured at the checkout, inside apps, and across the shopping journey.
Why Japan Became the Perfect Ground for Embedded Finance
Japan did not wake up one morning and decide to become a fintech playground. This shift has been slow, deliberate, and policy driven. For years, cash ruled daily life. Envelopes. Coins. Exact change. That culture is now bending, not breaking.
The first push came from the top. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry made digitalization a national priority. Cashless payments were not framed as convenience alone, but as economic infrastructure. Consequently, the adoption process progressed consistently. The portion of cashless transactions soared from a mere 13.2% in 2010 to an estimated 42.8% in 2024. Significantly, this was achieved ahead of the government’s own target. That number matters because it signals habit change, not just tech availability.
However, payments are only the surface layer. At the same time, Japan faces a quieter contradiction. Households hold about ¥2,200 trillion in financial assets. More than half still sits in cash and deposits. This is not risk appetite. This is inertia. People want safety, but they also want simplicity. Traditional banks struggle here. Their interfaces feel distant. Their products feel abstract.
Retailers fill that gap. A convenience store is not a financial institution, but it is trusted. You visit it daily. You top up, pay bills, redeem points, and resolve issues without friction. Gradually, that intimacy builds up. E-commerce titans such as Rakuten take a step further by positioning themselves in the middle of shopping, payments, and rewards. Consequently, money-related events become less banking and more living.
Meanwhile, regulation is no longer a wall. The Financial Services Agency has enabled API banking and open banking frameworks. Retailers no longer need to build banks. They just plug into them. This lowers friction while keeping oversight intact.
こちらもお読みください： 日本のバンキング2.0時代を変革するトップ・フィンテック・イノベーション
From Points to Payments to Banking
This is where embedded finance stops sounding abstract and starts looking mechanical. Not magic. Not hype. A repeatable pattern.
It usually starts small. Loyalty points. Harmless, right. Discounts, freebies, a reason to come back. Then those points turn digital. Once they live inside an app, they stop being marketing and start behaving like money. From there, the step to a wallet is natural. You load value. You pay faster. You stop thinking about the bank behind it.
Next comes the credit layer. A branded card tied to the app. Rewards auto applied. Statements simplified. Suddenly, the retailer is not just tracking what you buy, but how you pay and how often. After that, banking, investments, even insurance are not big leaps. They are just additional tabs.
That is the super app evolution. Points to payments to finance. Step by step. No shock to the user.
Rakuten is the cleanest example of this working at scale.
Rakuten Points are not treated as coupons. They are treated like a quasi-currency across shopping, travel, payments, and finance. Earn them everywhere. Spend them anywhere inside the ecosystem. Over time, users stop optimizing. They default.
This is where traditional banks struggle. Banks offer products. Rakuten offers continuity.
That continuity shows up in numbers. Rakuten Securities has crossed 13 million general securities accounts, the largest in Japan. That does not happen because people suddenly love investing. It happens because investing shows up inside a system they already trust and use daily. The friction is gone.
Points create stickiness that interest rates cannot. Once users are embedded, leaving feels inefficient.
Seven Bank took a different route, but the logic is similar. Instead of starting digital, they leveraged physical presence. ATMs inside 7 Eleven stores became financial touchpoints. High traffic. High trust. High uptime. Over time, those ATMs evolved from cash machines into infrastructure. Identity verification. Remittances. Now experiments with facial recognition and next generation services. Banking hidden inside retail footfall.
Aeon Financial Service followed the grocery path. Weekly shopping turned into monthly statements. Credit cards tied to supermarket spend. Then loans. Then a bank. Finance embedded into routine consumption, not positioned as a separate decision.
Different paths. Same mechanism.
Retailers do not ask users to switch behavior. They extend it. That is the real how to. And that is why this model scales.
Strategic Benefits for Retailers
At first glance, embedded finance looks like a side business. In reality, it rewires the economics of retail.
Retail margins are thin and everyone knows it. Price wars, logistics costs, promotions that eat profits. Financial products flip that equation. Interchange fees, lending interest, and insurance commissions carry far higher margins than selling groceries or gadgets. Once finance enters the mix, retailers stop fighting only on price. They start earning when customers pay, borrow, or protect their purchases.
But revenue is only the first layer.
The real advantage is data liquidity. Retailers already know what you buy, how often, and in what context. Banks mostly know how much you spend and whether you pay on time. Separately, both views are incomplete. Together, they are powerful.
When purchase behavior meets payment behavior, credit stops being generic. Buy Now Pay Later decisions can reflect real shopping patterns, not just abstract credit scores. A お客様 who buys diapers every month is low risk in a way a spreadsheet cannot explain. Embedded finance turns everyday behavior into underwriting signals, quietly and continuously.
This also reshapes customer lifetime value.
Financial products are sticky. A loyalty app can be deleted in seconds. A credit card or bank account cannot. Once customers store money, earn points, or invest through a retailer, switching feels costly. Not emotionally. Practically. That inertia increases lifetime value far beyond what discounts ever could.
Technology is now accelerating this advantage. Fujitsu and Sony Bank are integrating generative AI into core banking system development with a goal of achieving 20 percent faster development and more agile financial service delivery by 2026. This matters because it lowers the cost and time needed to launch new financial features. Faster iteration means retailers can test, refine, and scale services without heavy legacy drag.
In short, embedded finance gives retailers three things at once. Better margins, smarter decisions, and longer relationships. That combination is hard to beat.
The Risks and Challenges
Embedded finance only works if trust holds. Once it cracks, the entire model collapses.
The first pressure point is regulation. Offering financial services is not the same as selling noodles or sneakers. Retailers either become regulated entities or partner with those who are. In Japan, that means strict KYC and AML requirements. Identity checks, transaction monitoring, reporting obligations. None of this is optional. Each added layer slows onboarding and raises costs. Move too fast and you risk violations. Move too slow and users drop off. There is no easy balance here.
Retail systems were never designed to protect financial-grade data. Payment credentials, identity records, and transaction histories raise the stakes dramatically. Retailers are already high-value targets. Add financial data and the target grows brighter. One breach is not just an IT failure. It is a trust failure. Recovering from that is far harder than issuing refunds.
The third risk is quieter but just as real. User fatigue. Japan is deep into point-based ecosystems. Rakuten. PayPay. V-Point. Every app wants to be the daily wallet. For consumers, this creates clutter. Too many balances. Too many rules. Too many nudges. Instead of loyalty, overload sets in. When that happens, users disengage or consolidate around one or two platforms, leaving others behind.
This is the paradox. Embedded finance thrives on integration, but it dies from excess. Retailers that forget this may win features but lose users. And once trust is lost, it rarely comes back.
Conclusion & Future Outlook
Retailers are no longer standing at the edge of finance. They are already inside it. The real competition is not about who sells cheaper or faster. It is about who owns the financial layer wrapped around the purchase. Payments, credit, rewards, and savings are becoming part of the same journey.
Looking ahead, this model will not stop at consumers. Expect retailers to extend embedded finance to suppliers and partners. Short term credit, inventory financing, and settlement tools will quietly move into B2B workflows. At the same time, AI driven wealth and savings tools will begin to appear inside shopping apps. Not as complex dashboards, but as simple nudges tied to everyday spending.
Still, テクノロジー alone will not decide the winners. Trust will. Japanese retailers have spent decades earning it through consistency and reliability. Embedded finance only works if that trust carries over from the store to the balance sheet. Those who protect it will redefine banking. Those who rush it will remind users why trust is hard to win and easy to lose.
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