Tomorrow, 44 million users in Japan will be able to convert their loyalty points into XRP and spend it at over 5 million merchants.
Rakuten Wallet – the digital asset arm of Japan’s largest consumer ecosystem – is listing XRP for spot trading tomorrow, alongside Stellar, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Toncoin. More significantly, users will be able to convert Rakuten Points directly into XRP and spend it through Rakuten Pay across Japan’s merchant network.
What Rakuten Actually Is
For context on why this matters: Rakuten is Japan’s Amazon, bank, travel platform, telecom and loyalty programme rolled into one. Its points ecosystem holds over 3 trillion Rakuten Points, valued at approximately $23 billion. Hundreds of millions of transactions are processed monthly across its ecosystem.
Rakuten’s platform processes 5.6 trillion yen in annual e-commerce gross merchandise value – placing XRP inside one of Asia’s most active digital commerce networks.
Connecting XRP to that network means connecting it to everyday Japanese commerce at a scale most crypto projects only put in whitepapers.
To mark the launch, Rakuten is running a promotional campaign offering users up to 100,000 yen in XRP rewards.
XRP’s Position in Japan
This integration does not come out of nowhere.
XRP is already the third most widely held digital asset in Japan’s regulated exchange ecosystem, behind only Bitcoin and Ethereum, according to the JVCEA Green List – Japan’s FSA-recognised framework for institutional-grade crypto assets.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency is also expected to finalise a crypto reclassification framework by mid-2026 that could cut capital gains tax on digital assets from the current 55% rate to 20%. If that passes, the economics of holding and spending XRP in Japan improve considerably.
One important distinction: this is a Rakuten Wallet initiative. Ripple has not publicly acknowledged the move and Rakuten has clarified it as an independent decision.
Why This Is Different From a Standard Exchange Listing
Most crypto adoption news is about exchange listings, price predictions or regulatory approvals. This is something different – a payment integration inside a consumer ecosystem that most people in Japan already use daily, whether or not they have ever thought about crypto.
XRP becoming a redemption option for loyalty points is not a new use case in theory.
What is new is the scale. Forty-four million users, five million merchants, and twenty-three billion dollars worth of points that can now flow into XRP starting tomorrow.
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