Popular Messaging App ‘Line’ to Venture Into Crypto Services
As the cryptocurrency craze continues to grow further, more number of tech companies are coming forward to embrace the digital currency revolution. Japan’s popular messaging service Line Corp is trying to establish a new foothold in the fintech space by launching a completely new service intended for cryptocurrencies.
The Japanese tech giant will be forming a new subsidiary named Line Financial Corporation. As per the company release the new company will provide a platform to transact or exchange digital currencies in addition to other services like insurance and loans.
Line Corp believes that this move will help the company to further strengthen its position in the financial business sphere and it further adds that the company will also work further in fostering research and development of technologies like blockchain.
The services for cryptocurrency usage will be made available through the Line Pay app which is the company’s mobile payment and transfer app. Line Pay is a very popular payment transfer app used by over 40 million users with an annual transaction rise of almost 450 billion yen which is approx $4.1 billion USD.
Line Corp said that the new entity is currently awaiting licensing and approval nod from the Japanese authorities: “The application process for registration as a virtual currency exchanger has already been started with the Financial Services Agency [FSA], and it is currently under review.”
However, getting regulatory approval nod from the FSA is not going to be easy as recently $500 million have been stolen from Japan’s Coincheck exchange which got its license last year in September. Since then, the FSA has been tightening up the security procedures and reviewing its licensing method to make sure any such thefts are not repeated in the further.
That being said, Line Corp with its Line Pay app is dominating its business in four key markets of Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan. However, Line is not the first tech app to venture into this space.
Earlier this month, a popular stock trading app from the U.S - ‘Robinhood’ announced that it too is venturing into the crypto space with a very lucrative proposal of zero commission on trading. Robinhood has its existing business model for the stock trading around the same zero commission offer and is quite a hit among millennials.
Also, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had earlier this year announced that he will be studying virtual digital currencies and its supporting blockchain technology. With talks about WhatsApp bringing payments integration to its platform, it is quite possible that it too might have a crypto trading or crypto transfer facility in the near future.