Rakuten will roll its $9B loyalty program into a new blockchain-based cryptocurrency, Rakuten Coin

Back in 2016, Amazon’s Japanese rival Rakuten noninheritable Bitnet, a bitcoin case startup that it had antecedently endowed in, to assist it work on blockchain technology and applications. Today, one among the primary fruits of that deal has come back to lightweight. the corporate is coming up with a replacement cryptocurrency referred to as Rakuten Coin — engineered on blockchain technology and therefore the company’s existing loyalty program, Rakuten Super Points — that it plans to use to encourage loyalty services globally and to assist customers to shop for merchandise across totally different Rakuten services and markets.

The news was proclaimed by Rakuten’s corporate executive Hiroshi “Mickey” Mikitani on stage at Mobile World Congress in city, wherever he represented Rakuten Coin as a “borderless” currency. Neither he nor a Rakuten representative we tend to followed up with would provides a launch date for the service.

The news comes on the heels of an enormous wave of corporations making an attempt to work out their cryptocurrency methods, to faucet into the present publicity around suburbanised monetary services and therefore the apparently endless craving of individuals to listen to concerning and invest them as their value skyrockets within the absence of a lot of regulative management.

Crypto is being employed for a good vary of reasons — as a replacement funding platform, for currency speculation, international remittances, as a replacement payment currency and a lot of. within the case of Rakuten, it appears that there area unit 2 things at play here.

First, the corporate needs to examine if it will drive a lot of transactions from individuals internationally by surgical procedure a number of the charge per unit fees and alternative problems if they stock edict currencies. Second, there's merely the thrill of crypto today: those that may not are all that curious about loyalty programs before may activate to them if they see their reward as blockchain buy-in.

Even before Rakuten has launched Rakuten Coin, it’s notable and fascinating to examine a serious e-commerce company — that has billions of users globally and reportable $8.8 billion in revenues in 2017 — setting out with a come in however it would use cryptocurrency on its platform.

Interestingly, whereas Amazon has nevertheless to create any important moves within the space of cryptocurrency, there some speculate the corporate might get a lot of concerned, supported some recent domain purchases and larger trends.

There are over one trillion Super Points awarded to users since the program was launched fifteen years agone, admire $9.1 billion, and therefore the plan are going to be to currently offer users a lot of ways that of applying those loyalty points to a lot of purchases, as some way of driving a lot of getting to gather them within the 1st place.

Points presently area unit collected when you get — or, in bound markets wherever Rakuten runs marketplaces, sell — things or services on the location. like its rival Amazon, Rakuten contains a payment conjointly has associate MVNO mobile service with plans to launch its own full-blown mobile carrier — all of that become ways that of paying more cash as a part of the loyalty program.

A representative same that there's an honest funnel of individuals World Health Organization area unit already curious about shopping for things across regions. “People need special things that you just can’t get anyplace else,” she said. There area unit some forty four,000 merchants commercialism merchandise on Rakuten in Japan, its biggest market. alternative holdings embrace PriceMinister in France (which is currently rebranding to Rakuten) and Ebates, the rebates web site operator within the America that Rakuten noninheritable for $1 billion in 2014. The logic are going to be to feature Rakuten Coin to all or any of Rakuten’s businesses — a number of that these days have loyalty programs, and a few of that don't.

Mikitani used his look at MWC to run through a spread of alternative developments at the corporate, as well as yesterday’s news that the corporate planned to use to become Japan’s fourth mobile operator, associated an growth of the social options on electronic messaging app Viber, that currently has around one billion registered users.

Mickitani stressed that Rakuten was “very totally different from Amazon.”

“Basically, our construct is to recreate the network of shops and merchants,” he said. “We don't need to disconnect [them from their customers] however perform as a catalyst. that's our philosophy, the way to empower society not simply offer a lot of convenience.”