Despite the crypto space as a whole being affected by the bear market trend of 2018, in Japan, things are still rosy as East Japan Railway Company (JR East) is set to launch their crypto payment system. The latter is the biggest subway and train operator in Japan and has a massive customer base.
Launching of the payment platform will enable Japan residents to not only pay for goods and services in crypto but also be able to pay for their transportation through digital coins. Further on, per info on local news outlet, ANN News, JR Group is partnering with a local bank to facilitate the running of the crypto payment platform. Besides that, JR Group is also set to launch a crypto exchange.
DeCurret Exchange already has approval
With the licensing already taken care of the JR Group crypto exchange will go live on the 16th of April 2019 and will be known as DeCurret exchange. The Decurrent crypto exchange has already been licensed by the Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA). Per information on the public domain, Decurrent will go live and start offering trading pairs of XRP, litecoin, bitcoin cash and bitcoin.
However, come July or June DeCurret will provide its traders with Ether trading pairs. When it comes to Decurrent base currencies, the Japanese yen and bitcoin will be the desired coins. For JR Group, DeCurret exchange is providing it with an opportunity to avoid having to pay fees to a third party platform for providing payment services.
Apart from JR Group initiating plans to accept digital coins as payment for services, another entity in Japan set to accept virtual currencies as payment for products is Rakuten Japan’s biggest online retailer. On the other hand, Japans biggest electronics retailer Bic Camera has been accepting bitcoin as payment for products for a year now. Per Bic Camera figures, Bitcoin usage has gone up despite the 2018 bear market trend which poked holes in the performance of the coins.
