“Japan is digital” is too broad to support a commercial decision. B2B transactions, consumer merchandise, payment methods, cross-border flows and resale behavior are moving at different speeds. A useful launch model starts by naming which digital market it expects to enter.
1. B2B digitized faster than consumer commerce
METI put Japan's 2024 B2B ecommerce ratio at 43.1%, versus 9.8% for B2C merchandise. A buyer may already transact digitally while still expecting a very different sales, procurement and support process from a consumer checkout.
2. Ecommerce is huge—and merchandise still has room offline
Japan's B2C ecommerce market reached 26.1 trillion yen in 2024, but merchandise ecommerce accounted for 9.8% of its market. The large total and the lower channel ratio answer different questions.
3. Japan is cashless enough to matter. It is still a card market.
Japan cleared its national cashless target in 2024, while credit cards carried 82.9% of cashless payment value. A “cashless” checkout strategy still needs to be designed around the methods customers actually use.
4. Cross-border demand is not symmetric
METI's country-direction figures show that the size of a cross-border flow changes dramatically with its direction. Testing a Japan-based export offer is not the same experiment as testing an imported offer inside Japan.
5. Belief in the resale flywheel is moving faster than the market
Resale value is entering the new-purchase decision, but the latest market estimate grew much more slowly than the belief behind it. Attitude, transaction volume and a product's own residual value should be measured separately.
The operating question
Which transaction are you digitising: discovery, procurement, checkout, payment, ownership transfer or support? If the answer is simply “commerce”, the operating model is still too broad.
— Kaito Yoshizumi, Japan Legible