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A new survey by Japanese financial news service Nikkei Inc. estimates nearly three-quarters of convenience store operators in Japan accept contactless electronic money for payment and more than 80% plan to enable their customers to tap to pay within five years. Of 32 convenience store chains or operators responding to the survey, 23 said they already accepted e-money for payment of purchases and at least three others said they planned to do so within the next one to five years, said Nikkei. Contactless payment in Japan is available on cards and, increasingly, mobile phones. Specifically, 75% of operators expected to accept payment from Japan's contactless wallet phones within five years. In Japan, convenience stores are popular and have led the way in e-money acceptance. Such large chains as Seven & i Holdings (Seven-Eleven Japan), Lawson and FamilyMart accept prepaid and post-paid contactless payment from such e-money schemes as Edy from bitWallet Inc., Suica from Japan Railway East and iD from mobile telco NTT DoCoMo. But many other merchants now accept e-money, as well. In its first report on e-money activity released earlier last month, the Bank of Japan estimated consumers spent 563.6 billion yen (US$5.2 billion or 3.5 billion euros) with prepaid or postpaid e-money schemes during the fiscal year ending in March. There were 80.6 million such contactless cards or accounts on mobile phones on issue as of last March from six major e-money schemes the central bank surveyed. About 30% of those were credit cards or accounts, according to the bank. The average e-money purchase was 696 yen. The central bank apparently did not provide earlier estimates for e-money cards and spending for comparison with the year-end estimates, but it did say consumers had 77.1 billion yen of unspent balances on prepaid e-money cards or accounts as of 31 March, up 20% from six months earlier. Contactless-payment promoters see e-money as a promising market in Japan, where consumers make more than 90% of purchases with cash. The promoters have estimated the market for low-value purchases at 60 trillion yen.
