Osaifu-Keitai: NTT DoCoMo to buy a stake in Lawson to promote mobile payment service

Osaifu-Keitai: NTT DoCoMo to buy a stake in Lawson to promote mobile payment service

Japanese mobile service provider NTT DoCoMo has announced that they would be investing in the nation’s second largest convenience store operator Lawson. This would help them to promote their value added mobile payment service by enabling this at all the nationwide stores of this chain.

The company would be buying a two percent stake in Lawson for about nine billion yen. And Lawson will begin accepting customer payment through DoCoMo’s mobile phones equipped with a credit card service system.

This service is expected to be available at some 100 stores of this chain by the end of next month. The entire network around the country is expected to be covered by the end of next financial year.

NTT DoCoMo has around 50 million subscribers and they are relying on this new service to drum up new revenues.