Line Corporation set-up a subsidiary, Line Financial, last month and applied for a license to run a virtual currency exchange from Japan’s financial regulator, the company said on 31 January. According to Line’s announcement:
“…the company aims to actively promote research and development of technologies such as blockchain and provide a financial service that is convenient and safe to users.”
The Bloomberg news service then reported:
“Line is also considering expanding its cryptocurrency operations to Hong Kong and Luxembourg next, according to people familiar with the matter.”
According to the company’s 2017 earnings presentation, Line had 168m active users in Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand last year. It also operates in South Korea.
Its payments and money transfer app, Line Pay, “globally surpassed 40 million registered accounts with over 10 million transactions handled each month”. The firm aims to “secure 1m merchants in 2018”.
In addition to virtual currency trading, Line Financial will “in the future” provide loans, insurance and other financial services, the earnings presentation stated. Line already started testing investment management services through a partnership with Portfolio, a Japanese financial firm.
As of this writing, Line had not returned Delano’s message seeking comment.