Japan-based mobile payment service Showcase Gig has secured ¥1bn ($9.6m) from banknote processing machine manufacturer Glory having entered into a strategic partnership agreement.
Dream Incubator’s Dimension fund also participated in the round, which lifted the company’s overall funding to ¥5bn ($48m). Glory has also bought shares through a secondary transaction.
Founded in 2012, Showcase Gig runs personalised menu platform O:der and Kiosk, a network of ticket vending machines that support various payment methods.
Glory had already deployed about 18,000 Kiosk terminals in its affiliated physical stores, and Showcase Gig will help accelerate the digitalisation process of traditional stores leveraging Glory’s facial recognition and data analytics technologies.
Marketing agency Dentsu, financial services firm Mitsubishi UFJ subsidiary Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Dimension had provided an undisclosed amount of funding for Showcase Gig in 2020, along with debt supplied by Japan Finance Corporation, it said.
Mobile network operator NTT Docomo invested ¥1bn ($9.2m) in the company in a December 2019 deal that additionally involved a secondary purchase of shares. It had received an undisclosed amount from rail operator JR West’s corporate venturing unit, JR West Innovations, three months before.
JR Kyushu supplied hundreds of millions of yen (¥100m = $910,000 at contemporary rates) for Showcase Gig in December 2018, according to TechCrunch, following an investment of similarly undisclosed size from fellow rail operator JR East’s JR East Start Up unit two months earlier.
Nissay Capital, a vehicle for insurer Nippon Life, joined Nippon Venture Capital to inject a nine-digit yen amount (¥100m = $980,000 at contemporary rates) of series A funding in the company in 2014, according to The Bridge, two years after an angel round of undisclosed size.
