Tag Archives: Rakuten Card

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Rakuten Card launches two special FC Barcelona Credit Cards this Autumn 2017

Cards commemorate partnership between Rakuten, Inc. and FC Barcelona 

https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/card/design/fcbarcelona/

TOKYO, Japan, 2017-Jul-14 — /EPR Retail News/ — Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. today announced that Rakuten Card will issue two special FC Barcelona Credit Cards from fall 2017 to celebrate the partnership between Rakuten, Inc. and FC Barcelona.

Rakuten, Inc. became FC Barcelona’s Main Global Partner and Official Innovation & Entertainment Partner from Jul. 1. Based on that agreement, Rakuten Card will issue Rakuten Cards that will be the only official credit cards in Japan to employ FC Barcelona designs. Users will be able to choose between two types of card face designs: FC Barcelona Emblem Design, featuring a striped emblem in FC Barcelona’s club colors of blue and deep red; and FC Barcelona Player Design, featuring photos of five of the club’s leading players (*). Applications for the cards will be accepted from fall.

Since being first issued in July 2005, Rakuten Card has grown in popularity thanks to features such as no annual membership fee, a high point reward rate and the ability to utilize the points earned to pay for various Rakuten Group services. The card received the top customer satisfaction score in the credit card category of the FY2016 Japanese Consumer Satisfaction Index (JCSI) Survey for the eighth year in succession.

Rakuten Card will continue striving to further boost customer satisfaction by enhancing its credit card services and features in the future.

Service Overview

■ Name: Rakuten Card (FC Barcelona Player Design),
Rakuten Card (FC Barcelona Emblem Design)

■ Application / issuance date (scheduled): Fall 2017
*Details will be published on Rakuten Card’s website at a later date

■URL: https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/card/design/fcbarcelona/

■ Details: Point reward rate: 1% or more

[Rakuten Super Point Privileges]
(1) 1 point per 100 yen will be granted when using the Rakuten Card to pay for everyday shopping and public utilities charges.
(2) While the Super Point Up Program is being held, purchases made on Rakuten Ichiba will earn four times the points.

– Annual membership fee: Permanently free
– Brands: Mastercard, JCB
– Family cards: Free
– ETC: 500 yen (excluding tax)
– Insurance: Overseas travel accident insurance: 20 million yen (maximum)

SOURCE: Rakuten, Inc.

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Rakuten Card starts live operations of completely rebuilt core system; first adopter of Oracle Cloud in the Japanese financial industry

  • The first adopter of Oracle Cloud at Customer in the Japanese financial industry
    provides a credit card transaction environment with long-term stability
    to its members and affiliated stores
  • https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/

Tokyo, 2017-Jul-10 — /EPR Retail News/ — Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. and Oracle Corporation Japan today (July 10, 2017) announced the start of live operations of the completely rebuilt core system for Rakuten Card.

Rakuten Card is seeking to become the credit card industry leader. The rebuild of its core system allows Rakuten Card to operate more flexibly in line with the expansion speed of its business, and provide a stable environment where members can use Rakuten Card services with peace of mind in the long term. Previously, several hours of downtime were required every month for the Rakuten Card members’ online service “Rakuten e-NAVI,” but with the rebuild of its core system, this regular maintenance is no longer necessary, allowing Rakuten Card to further increase the convenience it offers to customers.

The new core system for Rakuten Card is an open system which allows it to flexibly combine the software and hardware of different operators. In addition to enabling simultaneous editing by multiple users, which was difficult on the previous mainframe system, a drastic improvement in productivity was achieved by unifying the platform, architecture and development language of the core and surrounding systems.

Rakuten Card is also the first enterprise in the Japanese financial industry*1 to adopt the “Oracle Cloud at Customer”*2, which provides an Oracle Cloud environment within a company’s self-managed data center. This enables a flexible response to temporary spikes in system burden caused by certain processes, provides further enhanced processing power to match the rapid increase in Rakuten Card members*3 and transaction counts, and provides a transaction environment with long-term stability to Rakuten Card members and affiliated stores.

The project to completely rebuild the core system began in 2014, and this marks the start of its live operations.

From the start of credit card operations in the Rakuten Group in 2005, Rakuten Card has operated on a mainframe-based core system. With that platform, however, due to limits to the hardware performance, it became increasing difficulty to rapidly respond to a variety of increased burdens. Furthermore, due to both the growing complexity of its core system resulting from many years of operation and a shortage of developers experienced in COBOL, there were severe constraints from both a development and maintenance viewpoint. To resolve these various problems, Rakuten Card decided to newly adopt Oracle’s Engineered Systems offerings, “Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud” and “Oracle Exadata Database Machine”, as a technology foundation, and migrate to a Java based application. The “VENUS®” migration service provided by Jcreation Co., Ltd. was utilized for the application migration. “Java Platform, Enterprise Edition,” the standard of Java-based enterprise development, was adopted as the development language.

Furthermore, an automatic testing environment was established to ensure product quality even amid the continuous rapid changes required in response to the ever-changing business environment. “Apache Spark” was introduced based on support from Cloudera, Inc. to realize simplified distributed batch processing, an innovation which prevents the loss of processing performance. As a result of this change, the average speed of batch processing was increased over 2 times compared to the previous system, making the highly stable operation of the core system possible.

Going forward, Rakuten Card will continue to develop new services and improve its existing ones and work to create an environment which allows it to offer even greater convenience to its customers for maximum satisfaction

*1 Based on research by Oracle Japan
*2 Oracle Cloud at Customer offers hardware, software, cloud management, support and IaaS on a monthly subscription model, as well as providing a cloud environment for Oracle Database, Exadata and Java environment at a metered or non-metered fee. It is 100% compatible with Oracle Cloud, and allows usage of all the latest features.
*3 14 million Rakuten Card members (as of April 2017)

* Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

■ About Rakuten Card
Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. launched the Rakuten Card in July 2005. The company strives to provide an environment which allows customers to use their credit card safely and with peace of mind, and aims to become the No. 1 credit card company in Japan. Rakuten Card is recognized for providing services that meet its customer needs, and it has been ranked number 1 in the credit card category for 8 years running in Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index survey by the Service Productivity & Innovation for Growth (SPRING). Rakuten Card boasts a current membership of 14 million users (as of April 2017).
URL： https://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/

■ About Oracle Japan
Oracle Corporation Japan was established as the Japanese subsidiary of Oracle Corporation in 1985. With the goal of being the “No. 1 Cloud Company” it offers its comprehensive, integrated cloud applications and cloud platform services, product portfolio that creates information value from Big Data; and a number of services that support the use of its products. Oracle Corporation Japan was listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2000 (Security code: 4716).
http://oracle.com/jp

■ About Oracle
The Oracle Cloud delivers hundreds of SaaS applications and enterprise-class PaaS and IaaS services to customers in more than 195 countries while processing 55 billion transactions a day. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at http://oracle.com.

Source: Rakuten Inc.

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JAPAN: Rakuten Card offers easy, fast and secure way to make mobile payments with Apple Pay

Tokyo, 2016-Oct-26 — /EPR Retail News/ — Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. today (October 25, 2016) brings its customers Apple Pay, an easy, fast and secure way to make mobile payments that is private and convenient with iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Apple Watch Series 2 throughout their day, including in transit, stores, apps and on the web*1.

Since launch in July 2005, Rakuten Card has rapidly gained popularity with key initiatives such as “No annual fees,” “High loyalty point rewards” and “Loyalty points for use on all Rakuten’s diverse services.” The 2015 Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index (JCSI) ranked Rakuten Card as No. 1 for customer satisfaction in the credit card category for the seventh year running. By offering customers Apple Pay, Rakuten Card will aim to continue to increase convenience for a broad range of customers.

Apple Pay is easy to set up and users will continue to receive rewards and benefits offered by their cards. Rakuten Card cardholders using their cards with Apple Pay will continue to enjoy the reward of one Rakuten Super Point for every 100 yen spent. To begin using Apple Pay, customers should update to the latest software for iOS, watchOS and macOS, available today as free updates.

To use Apple Pay In stores, tell the cashier you would like to pay with QUICPay, then simply place your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus near the contactless reader, and with the touch of a finger on Touch ID, the payment is complete. When paying with your Apple Watch Series 2, double-click the side button before holding it near the reader.

For Rakuten Card cardholders with the Mastercard and JCB brands, online shopping in apps and on websites accepting Apple Pay is as simple as the touch of a finger on Touch ID, so there’s no need to manually fill out lengthy account forms or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information. They can also use Suica with their iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and Apple Watch Series 2, and use their Rakuten Card with the Mastercard and JCB brands to recharge their Suica balance or purchase railway tickets with Apple Pay. When paying for goods and services on the go in apps or Safari, Apple Pay works with iPhone 6 and later, iPad Pro, iPad Air 2, and iPad mini 3 and later. You can also use Apple Pay in Safari on any Mac introduced in or after 2012 with macOS Sierra and confirm the payment with iPhone 6 or later or Apple Watch.

Security and privacy is at the core of Apple Pay. If your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch is ever lost, you can use Find My iPhone to put your device in Lost Mode to suspend Apple Pay, or you can wipe your device clean completely. You can also stop the ability to make payments with Apple Pay on iCloud.com.

When you use a credit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on your device. When you use Apple Pay, your credit card number will not be shared with the merchant.

Rakuten Card will continue to work to introduce innovative and reliable new payment services that add to the range of convenient services offered to our cardholders.

For more information on Apple Pay, visit: http://www.apple.com/jp/apple-pay/

*1 Eligible cards: Rakuten Card, Rakuten Pink Card, Rakuten Gold Card, Rakuten Premium Card, Rakuten ANA Mileage Club Card, Rakuten Bank Card, Rakuten Card Academy, Rakuten Business Card, Rakuten Black Card, Vissel Kobe Official Supporters Card, Rakuten Eagles Card

Source: Rakuten, Inc.

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Rakuten Card introduces Rakuten Gold Card

Rakuten Card introduces Rakuten Gold Card
Rakuten Card introduces Rakuten Gold Card

 

Tokyo, 2016-Sep-05 — /EPR Retail News/ — Rakuten Card Co., Ltd. today (September 1, 2016) announced that it will begin accepting applications for and issuing the Rakuten Gold Card, a gold card with an accessibly-priced 2,000 yen (excluding tax) annual membership fee, starting September 1, 2016.

When the Rakuten Gold Card is used for purchases on Rakuten Ichiba*1, cardholders will be awarded five times the amount of Rakuten Super Points (normally one point per 100 yen). Additionally, the Gold Card also allows cardholders to use airport lounges at 28 major domestic airports and two airports overseas*2 free of charge.

Among Rakuten Ichiba users who find points appealing and make frequent purchases to accumulate large quantities of Rakuten Super Points (Platinum members and Gold members), 34% did not own a Rakuten Card*3. Furthermore, 37.4% of users said their motivation for getting a credit card was that they “want to use the lounge services at airports.” This led Rakuten Card to issue a gold card with an accessibly-priced annual membership fee that also comes with a high Rakuten Super Points reward rate and access to lounge services at major domestic airports and two airports overseas.

In the future, Rakuten Card will also seek to further enhance customer satisfaction by meeting users’ needs and ensuring that all users can use credit cards safely and with peace of mind.

*1 The Super Point Up Program is currently being held on Rakuten Ichiba (as of September 1, 2016).
In addition to the normal allocation of points (one point per 100 yen), an additional three times the amount of Rakuten Super Points can be earned by using a Rakuten Card, an additional single allocation of points can be earned by using a Rakuten Gold Card or Rakuten Premium Card, an additional single allocation of points can be earned by shopping via the Rakuten Ichiba app, and an additional single allocation of points can be earned by using Rakuten Mobile. Thus, if all the services are combined, up to seven times the usual amount of points can be earned.

*2 Honolulu International Airport (Hawaii, U.S.); Incheon International Airport (Incheon Metropolitan City, South Korea)

*3 Reference: FY2016 First Quarter Consolidated Financial Results
For member rank details, see: https://point.rakuten.co.jp/guidance/rankkeep/

・Name: Rakuten Gold Card

・URL: http://www.rakuten-card.co.jp/card/rakuten-gold-card/

・Application / issuance date: September 1, 2016

・Eligible age for applying: 20 years old and above *Based on the Rakuten Gold Card’s independent screening criteria

・Issuance features: A gold card with a 2,000 yen (excluding tax) annual membership fee. Five times the amount of normal Rakuten Super Points (one point per 100 yen) will be awarded on Rakuten Ichiba purchases*1. Additionally, cardholders will be able to use the airport lounges at major domestic airports, Honolulu International Airport (Hawaii), and Incheon International Airport (South Korea), free of charge.

Source: Rakuten

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