Japanese E-Commerce Giant "Rakuten" is going to launch its own cryptocurrency

[mikfresh]

I made a summary from various articles i've read and what i can tell you i that there is still no release date for the project, but here is what we know so far:

Japan’s largest e-commerce company Rakuten, with a market capitalization of over $12.5 bln (last year revenue was $8.8 billion), is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency called Rakuten Coin based on Blockchain technology, implementing the "actual rakuten super points loyalty program". What does this mean? There have been over 1 trillion Super Points awarded to users since the program was launched 15 years ago, equivalent to $9.1 billion, and the idea will be to now give users more ways of applying those loyalty points to more purchases, as a way of driving more purchasing to collect them in the first place.
Points currently are collected each time you buy — or, in certain markets where Rakuten runs marketplaces, sell — items or services on the site. As with its rival Amazon, Rakuten has a payment also has an MVNO mobile service with plans to launch its own full-blown mobile carrier — all of which become ways of spending more money as part of the loyalty program.

The announcement was made by Rakuten CEO and founder Hiroshi Mikitani during his speech at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Feb. 27.
Mikitani referred to his newly announced asset as ‎a “borderless currency,” underlining Rakuten’s vision of differentiating itself from its online retail rivals, like Amazon, Alibaba or eBay and "recreating" the relationship between retailers and merchants.

There are two main points that Mikitani wants to reach:

1) the company wants to see if it can drive more transactions from people internationally by cutting out some of the exchange rate fees and other issues if they buy in fiat currencies.
2) there is simply the buzz of crypto today: people who might not have been all that interested in loyalty programs before might turn on to them if they see their reward as blockchain buy-in.

There are some 44,000 merchants selling goods on Rakuten in Japan, its biggest market. Other holdings include PriceMinister in France (which is now rebranding to Rakuten) and Ebates, the rebates website operator in the US that Rakuten acquired for $1 billion in 2014. The logic will be to add Rakuten Coin to all of Rakuten’s businesses — some of which today have loyalty programs, and some of which do not.

The quote that i can report as read in various articles is the following:
“Basically, our concept is to recreate the network of retailers and merchants,” he said. “We do not want to disconnect [them from their customers] but function as a catalyst. That is our philosophy, how to empower society not just provide more convenience.”

BULLISH NEWS in my opinion, the more people get to know the cryptocurrencies, the better. Curious on what we will see in the next months in this market.

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[demenBTC]

my opinion is, their concept is to develop the market to be more known as a great market with a more comfortable quality,
the network of retailers and merchants is very much in need as a real promoter

[Pierre 2]

One of the better news I have read around forums for months. Yeah these kind of local rewards programmes can actually become more popular than many people expect. I am waiting for further news about this coin as their ico might be "must buy".

[bratko99]

Sounds all good, but they'll probably would have a crazy hard cap on ico, if any.
Good for a quick profit, but nothing much, I guess.

Just my opinion, let's see how it goes.

[Tanhdoit]

If this is true, then count me in. Using reward points and loyalty points as a quick way for payment seems like an ideal space for growth in the crypto space. I honestly think crypto is like the internet 2.0 for businesses.

[trumper]

I doubt it is a security, but if I live in Japan I would definetely buy its stock now, it may already have risen though. It is like amazon of Rakuten, very good news indeed.

[Idrisu]

We are getting there, cryptocurrencies is going mainstream and I believe many online and offline retailers and wholesalers are going to adopted bitcoin or create there own coins in future. We are the jet age and there earlier recognized that cryptocurrencies is the future of financial and commodities assets the earlier we will take advantage of it and benefits from it developments.

[rehydrogenated]

I think Rakuten actually has a great opportunity to create its own cryptocurrency and have it be useful and valuable. However, there isn't a huge advantage of having an ICO. It sounds like they mostly want to give out a coin/token as rewards points in place of their current rewards point system. While that sounds easy, it may turn out to not be so great for the price of the coin or token in the long run. If the altcoin begins to pump people may start buying items to get the coins and dump them on the market.

[kolesozw]

I shopped few times from Rakuten and they are OK, but with very high shipping to EU. They are interesting shop for outside JP for specific items only.
They will make more marketing crypto like a big airdrop, than another altcoin, which is OK and will bring a lot non-crypto people to the technology.

[mikfresh]

Glad someone found useful this news!

[VclDm]

If this is true, then count me in. Using reward points and loyalty points as a quick way for payment seems like an ideal space for growth in the crypto space. I honestly think crypto is like the internet 2.0 for businesses.

Rakuten is one of the largest e-commerce companies in Japan, showing that cryptocurrency is having a huge impact on the growth of corporations and leading companies around the world. I think the big corporations do not want to be out of the game, which is the cryptocurrency market.

[Estrath]

Great news! Extremely glad to hear that. Rakuten is growing rapidly these days. I started to notice that they began to expand for international markets. For a last couple of years, they have already bought many good services and these services started to improve exponentially. Furthermore, considering that Japan is very loyal to cryptocurrencies I'm sure that this coin will be very promising.

[Samuel Erasmus]

See while the price of bitcoin has been going down it's been nothing but good news recently. There was also more talk of Starbucks introducing their own bitcoin which will only help main stream adoption. I think we will see allot more companies like Kodak after a quick buck though but even then it's still a recognised brand endorsing crypto.

[Icaxx]

One of the better news I have read around forums for months. Yeah these kind of local rewards programmes can actually become more popular than many people expect. I am waiting for further news about this coin as their ico might be "must buy".

You look so attractive with this news. This is very nice news which can improve the interest of people to join.
More merchant make own cryptocurrency, will lead the trust of people to cryptocurrency. Its good for future.