Japan is a very traditional country in which most of their small to medium businesses will use physical cash payments instead of credit cards. In 2017, approximately 7.35 million Chinese tourists visited Japan. Chinese visitors are not used to paying with cash since the popularity of cashless payments have been on the rise. In China, they utilize Ali-Pay, a mobile QR scanner payment. Japan has taken notice and are slowly integrating mobile payment technology. LINE, a popular social media service in Japan, have actually started a QR scanner payment integrated within their application. TakeMePay, a small multi-payment app service, has played a big role in Japan’s initiative to adopt QR payments. Using this form of payment will be easier and more convenient for a local, western visitor, and the waiters themselves.
Cashless payments are transforming transactions and increasing tourism. Once QR payments are deployed, Japan will be thriving during the Tokyo 2020 olympics. I found this article interesting because I will be headed to Japan in May 2019. I find it surprising that Japan hasn’t been fully adopted cashless payments yet, even though, they are more technologically more advanced than the United States. You always see their technological advances with robots and AI. I believe that in the next 5 years, everybody will utilizing some form of mobile payment. The future will be all digital. This is just one step.
Source:
https://skift.com/2019/03/25/japan-adopts-new-payments-tech-in-response-to-chinese-tourism-boom/
I think the general trend in the world is moving away from paper money. When a major economic country like China moves to make the majority of its currency digital, it would make sense for other countries to do so as well. I agree that the 2020 Olympics can be way more beneficial to the country if they start allowing QR payments because there will be a ton of Chinese tourists who can now pay for things easily.