Convenience, No Coins: Lawson Taps Stablecoins, Netstars Opens the Register 🏪

Lawson, the Japanese convenience-store operator, will test yen-denominated stablecoin payments at a Tokyo location in August, marking a new step in the country's push to integrate regulated digital assets into everyday retail. HashPort said Monday it signed an agreement with Lawson and telecom group KDDI to conduct the trial at the Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store. Participants will use HashPort's non-custodial wallet, while the store will process payments through its existing point-of-sale system, avoiding the need to open or manage crypto wallets. The companies plan to assess integration requirements, checkout operations, payment processing times and wallet usability before considering broader applications.

Separately, Japanese payments company Netstars launched Stablecoin Pay on Monday, opening merchant applications for a service that accepts multiple stablecoins at checkout. The platform initially supports USDC, USDT and the yen-denominated JPYC through the Solana and Polygon networks, with MetaMask as the supported wallet. Netstars set the merchant payment fee at 0.98% and said it plans to add more wallets and blockchains. Merchants can use existing payment terminals in most cases and handle product pricing, sales records and settlement in yen, even when customers pay with dollar-denominated stablecoins, removing the need to hold crypto or manage exchange rates. The commercial launch follows Netstars trials involving USDC payments at Tokyo's Haneda Airport from January to February and at a trading-card store in Himeji from April.

The move from limited pilots to a merchant-facing service comes as Japanese companies build more consumer-facing products around the country's regulated stablecoin market. On June 1, 2023, Japan introduced a dedicated framework for stablecoins when amendments to the Payment Services Act and related laws took effect. The rules created regulatory categories for fiat-linked stablecoins and require businesses acting as intermediaries to register with the Financial Services Agency. The framework was followed by regulatory approval for USDC distribution in March 2025 and by JPYC's registration as a fund transfer service provider that August, before the stablecoin was launched in October.