InComm Partners With Welcia To Grow Barcode Payments

InComm, a global prepaid product and payment technology company, has announced a partnership with Welcia, Japan’s leading pharmacy chain, to launch four mobile barcode payment solutions in its stores.

InComm will be integrating its point-of-sale payment technology directly with Welcia.

“Simultaneously connecting these major mobile barcode payments with the largest pharmacy chain in Japan is an exciting opportunity for InComm and Welcia’s customers,” Takumaro Arai, vice president and general manager of InComm Japan, said in a press release. “This partnership demonstrates our flexibility to work with Japanese and other international barcode payment providers while meeting an important consumer need in our region.”

The mobile payments that will be enabled at all Welcia locations are China’s Alipay and WeChat Pay, as well as Japanese payment brands LINE Pay and NTT DOCOMO’s d Payment.

The moves comes as the Japanese government has set a goal to increase cashless payments to 40 percent by 2025.

“We have actively sought to introduce credit cards, e-money and other payment services to improve customer convenience,” said Akinobu Kiyota, director of product promotion at Welcia. “Installing InComm Japan’s highly reliable mobile payment system helped us do that. InComm Japan has made centralized management possible by connecting multiple payment services, which is a great benefit for us.”

This is the latest partnership for InComm. Last year it was announced that InComm Japan was joining forces with Tencent FiT, the provider of WeChat Pay services and part of the Tencent group of companies headquartered in Shenzhen, China.

As a result, InComm Japan’s POSA network, which connects with more than 50,000 retail stores in the country, will facilitate customer purchases at the point of sale using WeChat Pay-issued barcodes. By leveraging this POSA technology, WeChat Pay customer account billing can be applied at the point of sale. This makes it unnecessary to set up a dedicated terminal and makes WeChat Pay services possible at all InComm retailers.