Japan is an uncommon blend of known and unknown: I drive a Nissan, you might drive a Toyota, my TV is a Sony, and since my time in Hong Kong, my go-to beer on hot days is an ice-cold pint of Asahi Morris shares that experience - and some hard numbers - as we cover:. An overview of the credit card and payments markets in Japan. Digital Payment trends and the push towards cashless.
Challenges with the credit underwriting process. The impact of Digital Wallets and QR payment providers. If you have any feedback or questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.
In Japan, there's been a lot of emphasis and support from the government to push Fintechs and attract foreign investments, with Tokyo being the next Fintech hub, hopefully in Asia. I was going to get engaged in Tokyo, I had the ring in my pocket, it was springtime, the cherry blossoms were out, we were in a rowing boat on the moat around the Imperial Palace. I think I might have even had a little drink of Japanese whiskey to calm my nerves. But we were also shattered, so I held that for another day.
Morris Iwai, all the way from Tokyo today, welcome to the show. Now, Morris, Japan is not a market I know well, myself, but it's also not a market that I know many people working in. So talk to me about that path that brought you to where you are today in Tokyo. Sure, just to give some background: I'm originally from Los Angeles, but I had the opportunity to work both in the US and Japan throughout my career, 20 plus years, primarily with Citigroup in their credit card business, both here in Tokyo as well as New York.
But what really brought me to Japan is my roots here in Japan. So I've been travelling back and forth between the US and Japan since I was little and I've always been fascinated by the market and the country and the people and how it's so different from US and other Western markets.
