Behind Apple's pay landscape: Japan had a mobile wallet ten years ago

On September 12, at a product launch this week, Apple released the Apple Pay mobile payment service, which was hailed by some in the industry as a permanent change to shoppers ' spending habits.

Behind the dazzling glow of Apple Pay, does anyone still remember that the mobile wallet had actually appeared 10 years ago?

In 2004, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest mobile operator, launched an electronic wallet service called "Osaifu-keitai", based on the number of users. Today, the Japanese market "Osaifu-keitai" mobile phone has reached 33 million, consumers can use this service to buy a variety of goods and services.

As a result, Japanese consumers were not thrilled by Apple's pay service, but worried that the company's choice of "near-field communications" (NCF) technology could not be compatible with Japan's existing mobile payment system. The "Osaifu-keitai" mobile phone uses NFC Type A/type b chips, and according to people familiar with the story, Apple chose Type C chip.

At the same time, for Japanese companies such as DoCoMo, the problem they are worried about is competition from Apple. This is because Japanese companies have historically been at the forefront of the world in developing new technologies, but the end result has always been defeated by the "backward", because Japanese companies are not savvy enough in marketing, pricing and product design.

In DoCoMo, for example, the company launched its pioneering mobile internet service mode–compatible in 1999, but failed to win the support of major mobile operators in markets outside Japan. DoCoMo has tried to expand overseas markets, but few companies are willing to take on the original cost of building infrastructure. Another example is Sega, the game giant who introduced online gaming into video games in 1998, but was eventually overtaken by other vendors.

In addition to Apple, Google (Weibo), ebay's PayPal division and square are working to make mobile payment services mainstream in the U.S. market. By contrast, after the strong growth period of the first few years, "Osaifu-keitai" mobile phones in the Apple iPhone2008 years after entering the Japanese market has fallen into the plight of user decline. By the end of June, DoCoMo's "Osaifu-keitai" mobile subscribers had fallen by 8% compared with the same period last year.

(Responsible editor: Lvguang)