April 21, 2020
Japan Fair Trade Commission
1. Purpose
In recent years, with business operators utilizing fintech entering the financial field in which banks have mainly provided services, there are some cases that they provide household accounting services for individuals, accounting services for small-and medium-sized enterprises or one-person businesses and cashless payments including using QR codes. It is expected that new entrants including different industries utilizing new technologies will help stimulate competition among businesses, encourage innovation including creation of new services and improve convenience for users. However, if there are factors interfering with the new entry or post-entry business activities, it may preclude these expected improvement from being fully attained.
For that reason, the Japan Fair Trade Commission conducted a survey on household accounting services and cashless payments with QR Code and barcode in order to ascertain issues concerning competition policy in these fields, and summarized issues under the Antimonopoly Act and competition policies from the viewpoint of promoting new entry and developing fair and open competitive environment.
2. Result
See attached “Summary of Reports” and “Survey on Household Accounting Services” (appendix 1) and “Survey on Cashless Payments with QR Code and barcode” (appendix 2).
＊Every announcement is tentative translation.
Please refer to the original text written in Japanese for more details.
