LINE’s 80 million active monthly users in Japan may be able to use LINE’s fintech services later this year
apan-based technology firm LINE Corporation plans to expand into fintech services in Indonesia in a bid to more tightly integrate into its users lives under the company’s recently announced mission to provide more services to fit its users’ lifestyle needs, a company executive has said.
LINE has been preparing to provide digital banking services in four of its key markets, namely Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia, said the company’s CEO, Takeshi Idezawa, during LINE’s annual conference at the Maihama Amphitheater in Tokyo, Japan on June 27.
“We are working in parallel in these four [countries] to prepare a banking business,” said Idezawa recently, adding that he viewed LINE Pay – the company’s mobile payment platform – and the upcoming digital banking services as key areas on which LINE would focus for development going forward.
“We would like to focus on these two businesses to roll out multiple financial services in all of our markets and hope to resolve the many pain points related to money,” said Idezawa.
LINE’s vice president of global communication and corporate affairs, Brian Lee, said the company had aimed to launch some parts of its fintech services in its overseas markets, namely Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan, in the second half of this year, with full fintech services expected to be rolled out early next year.
In its push to provide digital banking service in Indonesia, LINE’s subsidiary LINE Financial Asia had acquired a 20 percent stake of private lender KEB Hana Bank in October last year with the aim of providing digital banking services in the country.
The move would represent the second time that LINE expanded into fintech service in Indonesia, as it previously partnered with state-owned lender Bank Mandiri to launch LINE Pay in 2016, a service that was quietly discontinued early this year.
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