Rakuten Card Grows to a Record 20 Million Cardholders

Tokyo, June 30, 2020 - Rakuten Card Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rakuten, Inc., today announced that the total number of cardholders surpassed 20 million in June this year. This milestone was achieved 15 years since the launch of Rakuten Card in July 2005. The number of Rakuten Card cardholders continues to grow at a steady pace, reaching an additional 1 million cardholders in five months.

Rakuten Card has carried out various initiatives to promote cross use between Rakuten Group services and accelerate the adoption of cashless payments. As a result, Rakuten Card achieved the No.1 Credit Card Shopping gross transaction value in Japan *1, and the number of cardholders reached 19 million in January 2020. Since then, the company has also launched new marketing campaigns designed to promote credit card use and other initiatives to acquire new cardholders, such as releasing a Minnie Mouse-design Rakuten Card in April 2020, and a Michinoku bank-design Rakuten Card, the first original design card issued with a bank, in June 2020.

The “Cashless Vision” announced by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in 2018 aims to increase the ratio of cashless settlements to 40% by 2025. Along with the consumption tax rate hike from October 1, 2019, the Project for Encouraging Businesses to Introduce Cashless Payment Systems and Pass on Benefits to Consumers was launched as part of the measures taken to level consumer demand and to improve productivity of SMEs and convenience for consumers. From July 2020, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications will start the My Number Point Project, which will also be part of a proactive push for cashless payments. Rakuten Card has seen significant growth in the number of cardholders during this period.

Rakuten Card will continue to strive to enhance and expand its credit card service and lineup of features, and make financial services more convenient, easy to use, and accessible to customers in order to further improve customer satisfaction.

*1 Value of purchase transactions in the domestic market of FY2018 based on credit card issuers, survey by Yano Research Institute, Ltd. as of November 2019. The research results are the estimate obtained through qualitative surveys and analytic methods.