DoCoMo Sees Finance as Key to Growth

NTT DoCoMo aims to expand in finance and other industries to offset slowing growth in mobile phone services. “If DoCoMo is a mobile phone company in five years, our growth will be limited,” said Takeshi Natsuno, DoCoMo’s vice president of multimedia services, said in an interview. “My expectation is to make DoCoMo a more diversified company.” Natsuno, who oversaw the debut of i-mode in 1999, last month introduced the DCMX credit card service that lets customers use handsets to pay for goods and services such as groceries and taxis. The company expects the service to generate as much as 100 billion yen ($912 million) in annual sales in three years.

Tokyo-based DoCoMo spent 98 billion yen to buy a stake in Sumitomo Mitsui Card Co. last year. Sumitomo Mitsui handles the collection of payments and other processing for the service. “This credit card service is a gateway into the financial industry,” Natsuno said. “The financial industry is related to the retail industry, and the retail industry is related to other industries.” DoCoMo, the issuer of the card, will collect commissions on transactions and charge users via their monthly bills. Via: Continue>>