Edy

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Japanese electronic money system

title: "Edy" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["rakuten", "products-introduced-in-2001", "2001-establishments-in-japan", "2012-mergers-and-acquisitions", "japanese-brands", "e-commerce-in-japan", "online-payments", "contactless-smart-cards"] description: "Japanese electronic money system" topic_path: "geography/japan" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edy" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Japanese electronic money system ::

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Edy_logo.jpg" caption="Pre-2012 Edy logo"] ::

Edy, provided by Rakuten, Inc. in Japan is a prepaid rechargeable contactless smart card. While the name derives from euro, dollar, and yen, it works with yen only.

History

Edy was launched on January 18, 2001, by BitWallet, with financing primarily from Sony, in addition to then other companies, including NTT Docomo and the Sumitomo Group.

NTT Docomo's i-mode mobile payment service Osaifu-Keitai, which launched on 10 July 2004, included support for BitWallet's Edy. In 2005, over a million payments had been made with the service.

On 18 April 2006, Intel announced a five billion yen (approx. US$45 million, or 35 million euros as of May 20, 2006) investment in bitWallet, aimed at furthering its usage on computers.

On 1 June 2012, Rakuten acquired Edy, changing the official name to RakutenEdy and the parent company from bitWallet to RakutenEdy Inc. The three-oval blue-tone logo was changed to the Rakuten logo and the font of the word 'Edy' was altered.

Mobile phones

Edy can be used on Osaifu-Keitai featured cellphones. Makers of these phones include major cell phone carriers such as docomo, au and SoftBank. The phones can be used physically like an Edy card, and online Edy features can be accessed from the phones as well, such as the ability to charge an Edy account.

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Sony_PaSoRi_RC-S320.jpeg" caption="PaSoRi reader/writer used for Edy"] ::

References

Oshima, Kazuchika. (2006). "我が国における電子マネーカード発行スキームの展望 -Edy・Suica におけるクレジットカード発行スキームからの考察-". Nihon University.
Tsuda, Hiromu. (2 August 2005). "ビットワレット、おサイフケータイのEdyが100万台達成". Impress Watch.
Nedzu, Tadashi. (18 April 2006). "「どこでもコンテンツを買いやすく」，米Intel社が電子マネー「Edy」のビットワレットに投資". Nikkei Business Publications.
Yoshioka, Ayano. (26 April 2006). "インテルの出資でPCに進出するEdy". IT Media.
(1 February 2012). "「ビットワレット」が「楽天Edy」に社名変更……Edyロゴマークも変更に". RBB Today.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::