Japan

Bank of Hawaii will serve Japanese citizens looking to conduct business in the United States.

Kraken, one of the world’s longest-operating cryptocurrency exchanges, will end its trading services for Japanese residents.

Global policymakers are all over the map when it comes to regulating cryptocurrencies. But industry participants are eager to have some direction — and soon.

Coincheck Inc., the cryptocurrency exchange that lost about $500 million of customer deposits to hackers in January, was acquired by Monex Group Inc. in a deal that sent shares of the Japanese retail brokerage soaring to a five-year high.

Last month, banks submitted draft policies on the so-called application programming interfaces, or APIs, that will open up their systems to fintech firms seeking to do everything from payments and remittances to budget planning

Japan’s financial regulator ordered further improvements at embattled cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc. and penalized six others, including one operated by publicly listed GMO Internet Inc.

Ripple, the U.S. digital payments company, is working with 61 Japanese banks on an application that will enable customers to settle cash transfers instantly around the clock, the latest effort to apply blockchain technology in finance.

While there's lots of fintech innovation globally, some of the most exciting moves are coming from China, Japan and South Korea, writes John Mitchell, CEO of Episode Six.

Japanese card brand JCB is testing a biometric platform that it claims has an accuracy level of only one false acceptance in one billion transactions.

Alipay is chasing Chinese tourists to Japan, where it’s signing up a growing number of retailers and eyeing the long-term potential of the nation’s $45 billion digital payments market.

One of the world's largest bitcoin exchanges, bitFlyer, has landed in the U.S. with a focus on institutional investors — a move that suggests bitcoin's days as a payments instrument are still a long way off.

SBI Ripple Asia has formed a partnership with Dayli Intelligence to build a presence across Asia.

Mastercard has expanded its relationship with Pizza Hut to support mobile ordering in Japan.

Amazon customers in Japan can now charge purchases to their mobile phone bill through a new deal with Bango.

Peach Aviation Ltd. will become the first Japanese carrier to accept bitcoin as payment for airline tickets as the discount airline aims to attract more tourists from other parts of Asia.

Square Inc. has just scored its oldest customer ever — a 1,200-year-old Buddhist temple in central Japan.

Blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin, is increasingly seen as a way to cut costs for international payments.

Around the same time PayPal spun off from eBay Inc. to become its own company last year, it also took on the global money transfer provider Xoom. This acquisition may have been overshadowed by PayPal's bigger news, but it remains key to the company's post-eBay strategy.

PayPal's digital money transfer service Xoom will allow Japanese immigrants and others in the U.S. to send money for deposit into bank accounts in Japan.