Japanese Bitcoin services provider – Coincheck – informed on Tuesday about the service “Coincheck Denki“, which allows local users to pay for utility bills in bitcoin.
And that’s not everything. Bitcoin users, who will achieve the status “hard users,” will have the opportunity to save money — in a range from 4% to 6%. According to Coincheck, also “light users” will have some advantages that they can use. As expected, they will collect the amounts they save in bitcoin in a Coincheck wallet.
To provide all these opportunities, Coincheck’s parent company ResuPress Inc. has formed an initial partnership with Mitsuwa industry Co. Ltd. and in order to facilitate bitcoin payments, Coincheck will work together with Mitsuwa’s subsidiary E-net Systems Co, Ltd. as well.
According to the Coincheck Business Development Lead – Kaga Kawabata, his company has “achieved a major milestone for Bitcoin”. Customers will have this payment possibility from November. It is the first of its kind in Japan, where Bitcoin is still a new feature in daily consumer life. While a handful of businesses in Tokyo and Osaka accept bitcoin, most Japanese prefer it as a speculative instrument.
Where consumers can pay bills in bitcoin, it’s usually through third-party bill processors such as Living Room of Satoshi. Utilities themselves remain mostly unaware of how their customers are paying. But Coincheck has shown something that can be done by joining with the utility company itself.
This arrangement, however, may be more possible in this part of the world. In Japan, business deals happen via a complex network of alliances and partnerships between large companies and their subsidiaries.
Coincheck Denki (Electricity) E-net Systems has made this deal with Marubeni Power Retail Corporation, which operates power plants in 17 locations in central Japan together with an electrical business experience in over 22 other countries. Coincheck sees the service area to expand in future. While initially for electricity bill payments, the service will expand in future to cover gas, water, and even mobile phone bills.
ResuPress Inc. operates both the Coincheck Bitcoin exchange and Coincheck’s merchant payment services, found in several Japanese brick-and-mortar establishments. The company says its exchange business processes more than 100 million JPY ($991,000 USD) in monthly transaction volumes.
Tokyo-based Mitsuwa Industry Co. Ltd is an LPG provider which has operated for 76 years, and has over 200,000 customers. Its retail power platform operates under the E-net Systems subsidiary.
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