PayPay stock rises by almost 20% after below-range IPO debut

• Key insight: PayPay, Japan's equivalent to Venmo, debuted on the U.S. stock market as the largest listing from a Japanese company in 10 years.
• Supporting data: PayPay sold 55 million shares at $16 each in its IPO, then saw an 18.75% increase to $19 per share for its trading debut on Nasdaq.
• Forward look: The payments fintech is in discussions to expand into the U.S. market through a partnership with Visa.

Turbulent market conditions aren't freezing fintech IPOs just yet.

PayPay, a Japanese payments fintech, debuted Thursday on Nasdaq at $19 a share, an 18.75% increase from its initial share price of $16.

The company reported in a statement Wednesday night that it sold approximately 55 million shares priced at $16 per share, below the marketed range of $17-20 per share in its amended F-1 filing, for a total initial share sale of $879.8 million dollars.

The IPO marks the largest U.S. listing by a Japanese company in the past decade, with the previous being mobile messaging provider Line Corporation raising over $1 billion in its 2016 debut.

PayPay's U.S. IPO is its first step into the U.S. payments market. Last month, it partnered with Visa and said in a company statement that the two payments giants "have begun discussions toward jointly pursuing PayPay's expansion into the United States as the first step in its global strategy."

The payments fintech's market share in its native Japan is as ubiquitous as Venmo or CashApp is in the U.S., with the company stating in its prospectus filing that 1 out of every 5 cashless payments in Japan is made with PayPay.

The mobile payments app reported 72 million registered users in its public prospectus filing out of 96 million total smartphone users in Japan as of December 2025. Based on those figures, 75% of Japanese smartphone users are registered PayPay users, and of those registered users over half (55%) conduct at least one transaction on the app per month.

Analysts initially predicted that PayPay would surpass $1 billion, and could have reached upwards of $2 billion, when the company initially filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month. The IPO was initially expected in December, but the historic U.S. government shutdown last fall delayed the regulatory review.

However, recent weeks brought turbulence from the Iran war and related events into capital markets ahead of the scheduled debut.

Cristiano Dalla Bona, co-head of Mergermarket's U.S. equity capital markets division, believes that the below-the-range pricing in PayPay's initial share sale showed that investors approached the deal with a degree of caution under the weight of macroeconomic pressures.

"PayPay's IPO launched just as tensions rose in the Middle East, and a sharp sell-off in software stocks had already pushed several technology issuers to the sidelines," he told American Banker. "That said, PayPay has largely been viewed less as a speculative fintech bet than [as] a payments network woven into everyday life in Japan, with tens of millions of users and deep merchant reach."

Dalla Bona said that the company turned to the U.S. for its public debut due to its reputation as a "mature listing venue" for investors, but noted that the deal "effectively asks the U.S. buyside to take exposure to Japan's consumer payments economy."

A Renaissance Capital research note stated that PayPay boasts strong revenue growth and an improving earnings margin, but it is also operating in a highly competitive market with low switching costs.

Other international fintech IPOs this year have also seen rocky starts due to uncertain markets. Agibank slashed its IPO in half ahead of its U.S. debut in February, and BitGo and PicPay lost momentum after their IPOs in late January amid overall market uncertainty at the time.