ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Yoshihisa Suzuki, President and COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) has invested in pring Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku. Tokyo; Mitsuhiko Ogihara, Representative Director and CEO; hereinafter “pring”) which operates pring, a remittance/payment application, in cooperation with UFI FUTECH Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Toshima-ku, Tokyo; Naokichi Tsukamoto, Representative Director & President), an affiliate of FamilyMart UNY Holdings Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Toshima-ku, Tokyo; Koji Takayanagi, Representative Director & President; hereinafter “FamilyMart UNY HD”).

Recently, with a variety of companies entering the consumer financing market one after another against the backdrop of the progress in technologies and deregulation, among other factors, there are signs that new financing services featuring a high level of usability for consumers are becoming popular. By way of synchronization with bank accounts, pring offers Japan’s only remittance and payment service that enables users to use functions such as top-up, making remittances between users, making payments in stores and remittances to bank accounts, with no commission charged to users for any of these services. pring, an application that enables users to pay or receive money as easily as if exchanging messages via smartphones, can be used in a variety of situations such as making payment for food and drinks with friends and acquaintances or sending a gift of money to family members living away on Christmas or birthday.

ITOCHU will seek to promote its unique financing businesses to provide a range of products and services such as remittance, payment, asset management and insurance in response to customer needs in the financing market for consumers where services have been provided by financial institutions to date. ITOCHU considers that it will be able to provide next-generation financing services that offer a higher level of usability for customers through the mutual use of services provided by ITOCHU Group companies such as Pocket Card Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Haruo Takagaki, Representative Director and President) and Paidy Inc. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Riku Sugie, Representative Director and CEO), and the remittance/payment functions of pring that users can use free of charge. In addition, as the first service developed through business synergies with pring, ITOCHU will introduce a pring-based payment system in a FamilyMart store located in the headquarters building of ITOCHU in collaboration with FamilyMart UNY HD.

Going forward, ITOCHU and the ITOCHU Group will continue to build next-generation financing services in response to the needs of customers who are involved with consumer income, expenditure, remittance and asset management and aim to provide such services to companies and consumers.