SoftBank to Merge PayPay and Line Pay Apps in Japan
- The two payment services have a combined 75 million users
- The services to merge in April 2022 after securing approval
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SofBank Group Corp.’s telecom arm, which on Monday completed the merger of its Japanese internet business with messaging service owner Line Corp., plans to combine the payment apps of those two entities.
The company will fold Line Pay into PayPay, backed by SoftBank Corp., its Yahoo Japan unit and India’s Paytm, in April 2022 provided it secures all the relevant regulatory approvals, according to a joint statement from the two payment operators. SoftBank had kept mum on the possibility of a payments merger, saying only it aimed to extract synergies from the overlapping businesses.