TechCrunch Japan reported last week that Tokyo-based Freee, a Japanese startup behind a cloud-based accounting platform under the same name, has fundraised 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) from several investors including FinTech Fund, an investment fund recently launched by a subsidiary of Japanese financial service giant SBI Holdings (TSE:8473).
In conjunction with the previous series C round funding in August, the latest funding means the company has fundraised 4.5 billion yen ($37.3 million) in 2015 to become the most-funded unlisted company in Japan last year. Meanwhile, SBI Holdings recently announced a strategic partnership with Yello Mobile, a Seoul-based conglomerate of Korean mobile startups, for cultivating FinTech businesses in Japan and Southeast Asia.
Currently serving over 400,000 companies in Japan, the company announced in December that it has partnered with 11 Japanese megabanks including Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU) and Mizuho Bank, giving them an access to accounting data of SMEs and freelancers using the Freee platform upon their approval so that these banks can provide new financial services such as loans using the data for eligibility of expenditures.
In contrast to a study by University of Oxford predicting artificial intelligence will replace many jobs including accountants, Freee CEO Daisuke Sasaki does not think this will happen because accountants will be able to provide business owners with useful advice on business decisions by leveraging automated systems like Freee.
The content of this article first appeared on CNET Japan. It has been translated and reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of CNET Japan and the author of this article. (Text by Yuki Yamadai, Photography by Takao Tsushima) The Third CNET Japan Startup Awards ceremony was held on December 10th. The CNET Japan Startup Awards are given to startups that were noticed in 2015 and chosen. Selection was done by CNET Japan as well as The Bridge’s editorials with five startups receiving awards. In addition to the award ceremony, a variety of lectures as well as discussion panels were held with guest speakers. In this article I will be reporting on a discussion that was held on the topic of “How Japanese Media and Foreign Media View Startups in Japan.” The discussion featured four reporters from Japan and abroad and was moderated by The Bridge’s Masaru Ikeda. See also: Articles on past CNET Japan Startup Awards events A discussion between four reporters from Japan and abroad First, an introduction of the four panels members. Serkan Toto worked as a Tokyo-based writer for the world’s biggest tech blog, TechCrunch, from 2008 to 2012. Currently he is the CEO of a…
The content of this article first appeared on CNET Japan. It has been translated and reproduced by The Bridge with the approval of CNET Japan and the author of this article. (Text by Yuki Yamadai, Photography by Takao Tsushima)
In addition to the award ceremony, a variety of lectures as well as discussion panels were held with guest speakers. In this article I will be reporting on a discussion that was held on the topic of “How Japanese Media and Foreign Media View Startups in Japan.” The discussion featured four reporters from Japan and abroad and was moderated by The Bridge’s Masaru Ikeda.
A discussion between four reporters from Japan and abroad
First, an introduction of the four panels members. Serkan Toto worked as a Tokyo-based writer for the world’s biggest tech blog, TechCrunch, from 2008 to 2012. Currently he is the CEO of a Tokyo-based consulting company for the video game industry, called Kantan Games. Richard Solomon is the editor of his self-published Beacon Reports and Nikkei Asian Review, as well as a contributing writer of articles on Japanese startups for the Japan Times.
Serkan Toto, Freelance Journalist / Kantan Games CEO
Tim Romero is an entrepreneur who came to Japan twenty years ago, having since established four companies. He is also the host of a podcast program called Disrupting Japan. From CNET Japan, Ryo Fujii, an editor/writer covering Japanese web services and mobile carriers, also participated in the discussion.
What is the most interesting startup in Japan?
The discussion proceeded while referring to the results of a questionnaire that was completed by both Japanese and international writers and media partners.
The first topic of the questionnaire was “What is the most intersting startup in Japan?” Results from the questionnaire included Whill, a startup developing stylish electric wheelchairs, Eureka, a social matching service, Preferred Networks, promoters of the use of real-time machine learning technology in business, Wantedly, a business social network specializing in searching for interns, and others. There was also a percentage of responses from people who said “nothing particular comes to mind.”
Surely there are some startups among the questionnaire results that the discussion panel members recognize. Picking out Preferred Networks, Toto remarked that as for their field, the video game market,
Japan has reached maturity, but in the past year no significant startups have come out.
Richard Solomon, Beacon Reports
Solomon, who wrote about Whill three years ago, cited another recognized startup, C Channel, the video sharing social network founded by messaging app Line’s ex-CEO Akira Morikawa. He explained that he sees Japan’s startup scene as being in a transitional phase, until now remaining in a outdated post industrial revolution state, but is now right on the verge of moving to the next level.
On the other hand, Romero, citing crowdsourcing platform CrowdWorks and curated news app Smartnews as examples, sees Japan as having a lot of interesting startups. He explained that one main difference between the startup scene in the US compared to Japan, is that in Japan startups are often founded by entrepreneurs who have left positions at major Japanese companies and thus have a wealth of experience to draw on, making it easier for such startups to succeed.
CNET Japan’s Fujii made note of services that have moved into IoT territory, not limiting themselves only to the web. Especially in 2015, similarly to how mobile healthcare startup FiNC received funding from, for example, ANA (All Nippon Airways), looking back Fujii noted that this has been a year of progress in collaboration between startups and major corporations. He also added that cases where startups have been founded internally in large corporations are also increasing.
On what criteria do journalists choose startups?
The next topic for discussion was, “On what criteria do you choose startups to write articles about?” Questionnaire responses centered around criteria such as “originality” and “the entrepreneur’s vision”.
Serving as discussion moderator, The Bridge’s Masaru Ikeda
Discussion moderator Ikeda, a writer and journalist himself, pointed out that “there are startups that can’t very well differentiate PR from media.” Ex-writer for TechCrunch Toto agreed,
That’s true, there are people who misunderstand that difference. What writers and journalists are thinking about is the reader, what the reader is interested in. Why not try approaching media from the same point of view?
As a podcaster himself, Romero’s idea of journalism is a little bit different from journalism as information disseminated in text.
Podcasts are a type of media where you can directly hear the person’s voice, so I want to share that human aspect.
Japanese people, however, generally prefer not to display that “human aspect”, so therein lies somewhat of a challenge, Romero explained.
When searching for startups to write about, Fujii says he looks for “societal potential” and “ability to help large numbers of people overcome challenges”. If, say, some kind of progressive technology is created but we can’t see any concrete application for it in society, we won’t write about the technology on its own, Fujii explained. He also shared that at CNET Japan, they aren’t particularly picky about the scale of the companies they write about, rather, if it is determined that there is information that has some value to the world, they believe it should be shared equally whether it comes from major corporations or startups.
Ryo Fujii, CNET Japan writer/editor
A message to startups in Japan
The discussion’s final theme was, “What message would you like to send to startups in Japan?” One opinion that was frequently present in the questionnaire results was “Please issue press releases in English.” To this, all members of the discussion panel agreed.
Toto brought up what Japanese companies often consider “globalization”.
Hiring one foreigner and putting that person in charge of all international business… that’s not global.
Toto flatly stated.
Hire someone to do the work of globalization and you’ve created a total divide. Instead, companies should make their whole team global.
Moving on to Romero, he said with a wry smile,
I’ve lived in Japan for twenty years and my Japanese isn’t perfect, so I can’t blame anybody for not being able to speak English.
He asserted, however, that for companies that want to globalize, not only language but knowledge of the international market is what is really needed. Companies need to think more about what kind of value they can offer to the international community.
Tim Romero, Disrupting Japan
Closing out the discussion, CNET Japan’s Ryo Fujii, citing LINE’s success internationally as a precedent, expressed his opinion regarding globalization.
There have been a lot of companies that tried to expand into the US and failed, but why not first try moving into the Asian market, where at least the culture is somewhat similar?
See the original story in Japanese. There are many startups that develop great technologies and have a great team spirit, yet fail to promote their products or services because they lack user experience (UX) or good marketing skills. The Heart Catch program helps those foundering startups by matchmaking professional designers and marketers as their mentors during a period of two months. On this very first showcasing event organized by the program, five participating startups presented their results. On stage, each team gave a pitch of their improvement by comparing their project before and after the mentoring sessions. Then, team members discussed in detail the mentoring process with their mentors. In this article, I summarized how each team improved through this program (Hotaru, one of these five teams, is excluded because they are still in a stealth mode as of this writing). Mana.bo Mana.bo provides a private tutoring service via smartphones or tablets. Students can ask questions on their platform, which will be answered by tutors. In this way, students can take charge of their learning by asking freely what they don’t understand, which would be difficult to do in a classroom where teachers usually teach many students in their own…
There are many startups that develop great technologies and have a great team spirit, yet fail to promote their products or services because they lack user experience (UX) or good marketing skills. The Heart Catch program helps those foundering startups by matchmaking professional designers and marketers as their mentors during a period of two months. On this very first showcasing event organized by the program, five participating startups presented their results.
On stage, each team gave a pitch of their improvement by comparing their project before and after the mentoring sessions. Then, team members discussed in detail the mentoring process with their mentors. In this article, I summarized how each team improved through this program (Hotaru, one of these five teams, is excluded because they are still in a stealth mode as of this writing).
Mana.bo
Mana.bo CFO Koichi Tsunoda
Mana.bo provides a private tutoring service via smartphones or tablets. Students can ask questions on their platform, which will be answered by tutors. In this way, students can take charge of their learning by asking freely what they don’t understand, which would be difficult to do in a classroom where teachers usually teach many students in their own pace. In order for this project to succeed, it would be crucial for student users to ask many questions on the platform.
Mentors asked the Mana.bo team to redefine whom the target users are and what kind of message they wish to convey. After some reflection, they realized that although all users are students, their true targets are their mothers who make the final decision of paying for this service. Therefore, while creating an attractive interface to students, the team needs to convince their mothers that this is a solid service that helps their children.
Then, the team made one-year, three-year and five-year plans concerning what kind of service they want to provide, whether they should provide business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C) service, and the estimated conversion rates. Breaking down these steps helped them understand how to improve user interface (UI). As a result, one important factor of key performance indicator (KPI) concerning the probability of trial users to ask the first question has increased from 25% to 64%; the probability improved 2.5 times. It contributed directly to users’ conversion to the service, since once a question is asked it will lead to second and third questions.
Mentors:
Yasuhiro Yano (CEO, Bloom & Co.)
Takayuki Fukatsu (Interactive Designer, The Guild)
Sommnie by Neurospace
Neurospace CEO Takanori Kobayashi
Neurospace is a startup specializing in sleep. In order to stay healthy, we need to eat well, exercise and have a good night’s sleep. We usually ask nutritionists about what kind of food we should eat or ask gym instructors for efficient exercise programs. Yet we don’t often ask specialists about how to sleep well. In fact, there are various methods available for measuring how much food is consumed or how much exercise is done. If we wish to measure how long and how deep one sleeps, on the other hand, we need an electroencephalograph (EEG) to measure brainwaves, which is not easy to do.
Specializing in EEG technologies, Neurospace has teamed up with Tsukuba University to develop an easy-to-use portable EEG for commercialization. By allowing users to record brainwave data on their smartphone or on the cloud, the team started developing a service for observing and improving the sleeping habit without any help of sleeping pills.
Prior to the mentoring program, the company contemplated marketing this service to taxi companies for improving sleeping habits of drivers. They also thought that professional athletes would need their service for improving their performances by sleeping better. After investigating during the Heart Catch program, they discovered that there are other potential marketing B2B and B2C targets. In fact, IT companies are consciously worried about the lack of sleep for its employees due to huge workloads. Companies in the restaurant industry have a hard time recruiting due to its negative image of irregular shift hours. Furthermore, career-oriented working women around 30 also suffer from sleep deprivation, especially if they are team leaders or managers at a company.
With this new information about other potential targets, the team concluded that a device has to be wearable and comfortable. As a result, they have successfully developed the prototype of a wearable EEG device in the form of a nightcap. From now on, they will provide services to companies by creating online support systems for improving sleeping habits of employees, by asking about and analyzing their sleeping problems. As soon as the nightcap supply logistics is settled, they will also start providing services to individual customers.
Rosa Uchima (Product Designer, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
Nobu Takenaka (Marketing, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
D Free by Triple W Japan
Triple W Japan “Organizer” Atsushi Nakanishi
After successfully launching a crowdfunding campaign in Japan this year, Triple W Japan will start shipping its wearable device which predicts the timing of bowel movement, called D Free, from next year. The company’s “organizer” Atsushi Nakanishi told us that he didn’t know how to promote this product that has so many potential applications.
They started by elucidating three problems to be solved: 1. Price range, 2. Wearability and 3. Potential use cases.
First of all, according to some studies, 62.5% of all seniors, living alone or living under assisted conditions, have experienced bowel control issues. For those potential customers, the estimated price range of around 20,000 yen (about $170) is affordable. They are contemplating other types of sales plans, including monthly subscriptions.
Second, wearability is an important UX aspect upon marketing the device. The company has concluded that the actual form of the device won’t bother seniors both who are actively living and who need assistance. On the other hand, the device must have “cool” design, if they are to expand their market to the beauty, health and sport industries.
Third of all, potential target user base may include women seeking not only outer beauty but also inner beauty in addition to elderly people, as the company expands to the beauty, health, and sport industries as mentioned above. Since many women suffer from constipation, the company envisages the possibility of using the device to propose bowel improvement plans, by generating healthy and natural digestive habits without taking laxatives or suppliments.
As D Free has many potential applications, mentors suggested that it would help companies to clarify the context by pondering whose life they wish to improve with this product. Nakanishi said that he was reminded of how important designing and marketing is for business through this program.
Mentors:
Hiroto Ebata (CMO, IMJ – Professor, Graduate School of Project Design – Ambassador, World Marketing Summit)
Mie Hommura (The Guild – Sleepytiger)
Yukiya Okuda (ALUMICAN.NET – IROZA – Part-time instructor, Tama Art University – Designer and Programmer)
Quiver
Quiver producer Jessop Petroski
Originally from New Zealand, this startup first appeared on The Bridge during B Dash Camp Osaka in 2013. Relocating the base to Japan, which is one of the Quiver’s biggest markets, the company has steadily gained in reputation by attending international events and obtaining media coverage. Since they don’t know the Japanese market well enough, they have always worried whether their products fits into the Japanese market. By participating in the Heart Catch program, they succeeded in evolving their products by implementing Japanese users’ voices.
Quiver (formally known as colAR) created an augmented reality (AR) tool that allows any colored drawing to be changed into 3D animation, just by taking a picture on the Quiver app using a smartphone or tablet. Developing this idea, they also created a technology to combine real objects with 3D animation by putting markers on the object. As one possibility of the business plan of this product, they propose collaborating with airline companies to create special services for children to play on airplanes with a tablet. This product has promising potentials in the children’s market.
Quiver possesses high technology of recognizing 2D drawing pictures and turning them into 3D animation. Like D Free introduced above, this technology also has many application potentials. Therefore it’s important to clarify what kind of UX the company wants to provide and who their potential marketing targets are. As Quiver can easily promote this product to adults beyond children, they will more need to cultivate potential use cases.
Mentors:
Nobu Takenaka (Marketing, TBWA\HAKUHODO\QUANTUM)
Niya Sherif (Interactive Designer)
Translated by Moto Tsujino via Mother First Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy and Masaru Ikeda
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup offering expense balancing apps such as BizNote for Yayoi Online and Staple, announced earlier this month that they have secured series B round funding from Saison Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and IMJ Investment Partners (henceforth IMJ-IP). While the particulars of this investment have yet to be made clear, funding is thought to reach into the tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). As the series B round has not yet closed, Crowd Cast will continue inviting further investment from other companies, eventually looking to raise funding in the ballpark of about 1 million yen ($830,000). Crowd Cast also secured an undisclosed amount of series A round funding from IMJ-IP in 2014. As for their investments from business firms thus far, this round’s investment from Saison Ventures comes after a $210,000 seed round contribution in May of 2013 from major Japanese accounting software developer Yayoi. Crowd Cast began providing their expense balancing app for startups and mid-sized companies, Staple, in September of last year, but with this financial partnering with Saison Ventures, they are focusing on…
Tokyo-based Crowd Cast, a startup offering expense balancing apps such as BizNote for Yayoi Online and Staple, announced earlier this month that they have secured series B round funding from Saison Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Japanese leading credit card company Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and IMJ Investment Partners (henceforth IMJ-IP). While the particulars of this investment have yet to be made clear, funding is thought to reach into the tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars). As the series B round has not yet closed, Crowd Cast will continue inviting further investment from other companies, eventually looking to raise funding in the ballpark of about 1 million yen ($830,000).
Crowd Cast also secured an undisclosed amount of series A round funding from IMJ-IP in 2014. As for their investments from business firms thus far, this round’s investment from Saison Ventures comes after a $210,000 seed round contribution in May of 2013 from major Japanese accounting software developer Yayoi.
Crowd Cast began providing their expense balancing app for startups and mid-sized companies, Staple, in September of last year, but with this financial partnering with Saison Ventures, they are focusing on expanding Staple’s features and increasing users in cooperation with Credit Saison and their 35 million registered credit card user base. Concretely speaking, the methods of inputting expenses into Staple have been either manual input from receipts and invoices, etc., or by importing IC card use history data. In the future, however, it is expected that we will see functionality for connecting to online credit card use history data for Saison credit card users.
Crowd Cast CEO Takashi Hoshikawa spoke to The Bridge about this recent investment:
CEO Takashi Hoshikawa
This year we did IC smart card use history reading through NFC (near field communication), so next we want to implement an OCR (optical character recognition) feature for importing receipts. We’ll be expanding our features in the direction of the Electronic Books Maintenance Act of Japan. Also we’re looking to strengthen our back-end infrastructure as well as integration with credit card systems.
He continued:
With our corporate-aimed Staple Team, we’ve come to see the types of industries where our service will be made particularly necessary: advertising firms, real estate companies, and other industries with large numbers of employees. Especially in companies with many locations and large numbers of staff who aren’t supplied with computers for work, (expenses can be balanced using smartphones so) Staple Team is going to be an invaluable tool.
According to Hoshikawa, Crowd Cast has currently placed Staple Team in the research phase while they gather more information about the users’ needs, after which they will be proceeding with monetization. Moving into 2016, as many accounting type services will be boasting support for Japan’s new “my number” system, Crowd Cast says they aren’t particularly concerned with “my number” support. One reason for that might be that, rather than aiming to be a total accounting service, Crowd Cast are concentrating the focus of their solutions on expense balancing. In addition, they are currently considering the possibility of integrating their services with third party payroll management platforms.
Crowd Cast’s app designed for private-use, Staple, is free to use, but their commercial version built for team-based management, Staple Team, starts at 600 yen (about $5) a month. They have, however, began offering a “startup program” which makes Staple Team available to use for free for companies that are less than five years old, student entrepreneurs, as well as NPOs, so for startups in the early stages who don’t yet have a dedicated staff member handling accounting, this might be a good opportunity to try Staple Team.
See the original story in Japanese.This is part of our coverage of Global Brain Alliance Forum 2015. Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo. As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award. The judges were: Shigeyuki Tsuchida, Senior Executive Officer, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan Ken Matsui, Project Manager, Mitsui Fudosan Venture Co-Creation Project, a.k.a. 31 Ventures Takashi Shibayama, Director of Content and Media Business, Furyu Chester Jungseok Roh, CSO, Reality Reflection The top prize winner: Stellasia LED (Japan) Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise. Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart…
Tokyo-based VC firm Global Brain this month held an annual startup conference event called Global Brain Alliance Forum (GBAF) in Tokyo.
As a part of GBAF, a startup pitch event called the Global Startups Pitch Battle was held, where 10 startups from Japan and the other Asian countries competed. Japan’s Stellasia LED won the top award.
Stellasia CEO Richard Matsuura (left) receives the award from judge Ken Matsui.
Stellasia LED is developing an AC-driven LED lamp for industrial use, in contrast to typical LED lamps driven by AC. Stellasia LED’s design eliminates the use of easily malfunctioning electric components, such as aluminum electrolytic capacitors in AC-driven LED, thus reducing failure rates, energy consumption, and noise.
Although voltage differs by country, the AC-driven LED will enable standardizing circuits in products and unified production lines, thus reducing manufacturing costs. The team is planning to start new businesses, such as smart lighting.
The Global Brain award winner: Kacific (Singapore)
Singapore-based Kacific aims to use communication satellites to provide broadband Internet service to isolated islands of countries in the Asia-Pacific region such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. Leveraging existing technologies, it plans to provide an internet connection service of 50Mbps at cheaper rates than other services.
The satellites will be ordered in 2016 and launches will commence in 2018. The total investment is estimated to be $182 million. Fees will be collected by the wholesaling of the service to ISP or the government in each country. The control center for the satellites and the service will be in Japan.
Thailand-based Eatigo offers a mobile app for dining deals and restaurant reservations under the same name, attracting customers by providing discount information in off-peak hours. It launched domestically in June 2014, and is being developed for Singapore.
In comparison with typical customer services such as hotels or airlines having 73% and 74% of the usage rate for each, that for restaurants is only 35%. To lower vacancy rates of restaurants, this service supports user restaurants to shape their customer traffic.
Eatigo is developing a mobile app for Japan and India. Also, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia are targeted as future markets.
Eatigo CEO Michael Cluzel
The audience award winner: Axelspace (Japan)
Axelspace CEO Yuya Nakamura (right) receives the award from judge Takashi Shibayama.
Japan’s Axelspace was established as a spin-off from the University of Tokyo in 2008. The team developed a micro-satellite only 50 centimeters square and 60 kilograms in weight. It will launch satellites for Japan’s weather information service Weathernews (TSE:4825). Starting from three satellites in 2017, it will launch ten satellites every year from 2018, to construct a system of 50 low-earth orbit satellites for data collection of weather or topography. The data will be sold to public agencies or private companies. The launch of a typical satellite can cost several tens of millions dollars, however, the micro-satellite can be launched for about $8 million.
See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Liquid, a Japanese startup developing payment solutions leveraging a unique biometric authentication technology, announced on 25 December that it has fundraised from Itochu (TSE:8001), Information Services International-Dentsu (ISID, TSE: 4812), Credit Saison (TSE:8253), and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital (UTEC). Financial details of the investment have not been disclosed. Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders. Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this…
Prior to the latest funding, Liquid received government grants of about 42 million yen ($350,000) in 2014 and about 50 million yen ($416,000) in 2015 based on the qualification to the I-Challenge innovation initiative program by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, followed by receiving an undisclosed sum of investment from UTEC. In addition, the company disclosed that their shareholders include Japan’s major telco conglomerate NTT Group and Internet service giant Digital Garage (TSE:4819) while they have not disclosed when these companies joined as shareholders.
Liquid was born out of the third incubation batch by Docomo Ventures. The company has developed a biometric payment system called Liquid Pay, which uses fingerprints to authenticate users. Traditionally, the fingerprint authentication used the 1:1 verification method that took time to identify the input fingerprint from a large number of registered fingerprint patterns. But this company has employed a 1:N identification method using deep learning algorithms. With this method, it only takes a few seconds to identify the input fingerprint. Once users are enrolled in this system, they can purchase with their fingerprints, allowing them to go out without cash or credit cards. By registering the fingerprints from two fingers, the risk of misidentifying the fingerprint is reduced to 1 in one hundred million.
This system is used at Huis Ten Bosch, a theme park in Nagasaki, Japan, where visitors can pay at restaurants and make purchases at souvenir shops without having to bring their wallet, giving them a sense of freedom. It has also been implemented at a hotel in Sri Lanka where hotel guests enroll their biometric information at check-in. After that, they can then unlock the key and make purchases at partnered stores using just their fingerprints. Based on the Liquid Pay technology, the company rolled out a trial of a community currency system in Hokkaido in association with ISID, aiming to offer foreign visitors a more convenient payment option at travel destinations.
Based on the partnership with new shareholders on this funding, Liquid plans to focus on developing services for an increasing number of inbound visitors to Japan toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, expanding to the medical and public sectors, as well as regional service expansion to the Southeast Asian market. Having a dazzling selection of companies with expertise in global expansion, system development, finance, and payments infrastructure as shareholders, the partnership will give a boost to an expanding Liquid Pay and other applications based on the company’s biometric authentication technology.
Masaru Ikeda
The Bridge
Mentors:
Translated by Moto Tsujino via 
