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.
