4. Pursuing our cashless payment strategies

In May 2018, SMBC Group issued a press release under the title of “SMBC Group’s Cashless Payment Strategies,” in anticipation of the increasing needs from a cashless society, and developed necessary arrangements to implement strategies on a group-wide basis. To this end, SMFG bought back shares of Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company from NTT DoCoMo to make it a wholly owned subsidiary of SMFG in April 2019, and SMCC made Cedyna Financial Corporation (renamed SMBC Finance Service Co., Ltd., in July 2020) a wholly owned subsidiary. Following that, Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company tied with GMO Payment Gateway, and Visa Worldwide Japan, to develop “stera,” a next-generation payment platform that supports multiple payment methods on a single device. Rolled out in 2019, the service aimed to demonstrate a model that delivers “convenient, safe, secure, and beneficial” cashless payment processes to consumers and retailers in a cashless society.