Line bets $182m on its mobile payments business

Line Corporation, the company behind the dominant chat app in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, announced in a filing that it is investing US$182 million into Line Pay, its mobile payments subsidiary. No other details were revealed.

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The move cements Line’s ambition of being becoming the dominant WeChat-like ecosystem outside of China, though it faces stiff competition in Southeast Asia’s superapp sweepstakes from Go-Jek and Grab.

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GIF by Tech in Asia, using photos from Line.

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The investment is significant considering it made US$1.88 billion in revenue (growing 24 percent year-on-year) and US$52.7 million in losses in 2018.

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Like WeChat, Line is building out a wide range of content to bolster its ecosystem. These include games, jobs, manga, and ecommerce services.

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The payments business – which now includes physical retail terminals and credit cards – is what ties all these things together, and Line is going all in by investing in financial services.

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It’s now looking into launching a digital bank in Japan and could roll out loans and insurance products. It’s betting big on cryptocurrency too.

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While Line is seeing significant traction in its top markets of Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia, it has faced many obstacles. It claims to have 165 million monthly active users, though user growth has stalled for some time. Meanwhile, Line Pay has had to retreat from Singapore.

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Currency converted from Japanese Yen. US$1 = JPY 110.