Lawson, Inc., one of Japan’s largest convenience store chains, said July 13, 2026 it will trial JPYC stablecoin payments next month at its Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo’s Minato Ward. HashPort and KDDI are the trial’s partners, linking payment directly to Lawson’s point-of-sale system.
Key Takeaways
- Lawson will trial JPYC stablecoin payments at its Takanawa Gateway City store starting next month, scanning a smartphone-wallet barcode at checkout.
- The pilot, according to Lawson, is Japan’s first stablecoin payment trial linked directly to a POS system, letting sales and time-of-purchase data flow into store management tools.
- HashPort, KDDI, and Lawson signed the trial agreement, with HashPort supplying a non-custodial wallet for the pilot.
- Separately, per Netstars, the payments firm launched “Stablecoin Pay,” a merchant service supporting USDC, USDT, and JPYC on Solana and Polygon, charging a 0.98% merchant fee.
- JPYC, issued in October last year, has already added acceptance at the Chibo restaurant chain and Cheerio vending machines in Kyoto.
What Happened?
The trial, per HashPort, follows an agreement HashPort signed with Lawson and KDDI to run the pilot at the Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo. Under the setup, a customer presents a barcode from a smartphone digital wallet and a store employee scans it with the existing POS terminal to settle the purchase.
Checkout handling, per HashPort, splits between HashPort’s non-custodial wallet on the customer side and the store’s own point-of-sale integration, a design meant to avoid requiring staff to manage crypto wallets directly.
Lawson frames the integration as more than a checkout novelty. Connecting the POS and stablecoin payment systems lets the retailer manage sales quantity and purchase time data inside its existing store-management system, the same infrastructure it already uses for inventory and staffing decisions. That operational tie-in, not just accepting a new payment type, is what Lawson calls out as the trial’s distinguishing feature over prior crypto-payment pilots.
Japan’s Top-Three Convenience Store Chain Lawson to Launch Country’s First POS-Integrated Stablecoin Payment Trial
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) July 13, 2026
Japan’s top-three convenience store chain Lawson will trial yen-denominated stablecoin JPYC payments in early August at its Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo, in… pic.twitter.com/r5yEI1xP1I
Netstars Runs a Parallel Merchant Push
While Lawson tests one store, a separate Japanese payments firm is scaling a broader merchant option. Netstars launched Stablecoin Pay and opened applications for merchants that want to accept stablecoins as a payment option. The service supports USDC, USDT, and JPYC initially, running on the Solana and Polygon networks with MetaMask as the supported wallet.
For MetaMask and broader self-custody usage trends, MetaMask’s role as the connecting wallet matters to merchants weighing setup friction. Netstars sets its merchant fee at 0.98% and says merchants can use existing payment terminals in most cases, settling in yen even when customers pay with dollar-denominated stablecoins.
The company previously ran smaller pilots, in-store USDC payments at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport from January to February, then a trading card store in Himeji starting in April, before moving to a general merchant service. Where Lawson is testing a single POS-linked integration to validate reliability and settlement speed, Netstars is opening the door to any merchant willing to onboard. The two approaches read as complementary bets on the same underlying question: whether Japanese retailers will accept stablecoins without adding new operational burden.
The Regulatory Backdrop
Japan’s stablecoin activity sits inside a dedicated framework. Per the Financial Services Agency’s own published bulletin, Cabinet Orders and Cabinet Office Orders implementing the 2022 revision of the Payment Services Act took effect June 1, 2023, subjecting Electronic Payment Instrument Exchange Service Providers to registration with the Financial Services Agency and new travel rule reporting obligations on stablecoin and crypto asset transfers. JPYC operates as a registered issuer under that structure, which distinguishes the current wave of retail pilots from earlier, less regulated crypto payment experiments.
JPYC’s expansion beyond trading into everyday spending has been steady rather than sudden. The stablecoin added acceptance at Chibo, an okonomiyaki restaurant chain, in April, and at Cheerio vending machines in Kyoto this month. JPYC also signed memorandums of understanding last month with South Korea’s LINE NEXT and Danal to expand real world payment use there, aimed at letting foreign visitors spend JPYC in South Korean consumer sectors like beauty and fashion. Stacked against JPYC’s October 2025 issuance, that cadence works out to roughly one new acceptance channel every two months, a pace that separates JPYC’s rollout from a one-off pilot.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
The Lawson trial matters less for its single-store footprint than for what it tests: whether a stablecoin can slot into a retailer’s existing checkout and back office systems without adding a parallel workflow. Lawson’s framing, tying payment data into the same system that already tracks sales quantity and purchase timing, signals the retailer is evaluating stablecoins as an operations tool, not just an alternative tender. That distinction separates this pilot from earlier standalone crypto payment experiments that never left a sandbox.
Netstars’ near-simultaneous Stablecoin Pay launch reinforces the same read from a different angle. One firm is proving reliability inside a single, controlled deployment. The other is opening merchant access broadly and betting on volume.
Both efforts rely on the same regulatory scaffolding the Financial Services Agency built in 2023, which is precisely why Japan can run these pilots while South Korea’s won-denominated stablecoin legislation has stalled, with a blockchain industry official quoted as saying that “as legislation is delayed, only the competitiveness of Korean blockchain companies is sinking“. Whether Lawson expands JPYC beyond Takanawa Gateway City will depend on the trial data it collects on payment speed and system stability, not on stablecoin sentiment broadly.
