Lawson to test yen stablecoin payments in August as Netstars opens merchant service

Lawson, the Japanese convenience store operator, plans to begin testing yen-denominated stablecoin payments in August at its Lawson Takanawa Gateway City store in Tokyo, according to a report cited by BlockBeats from Cointelegraph. The pilot will be carried out under an agreement involving HashPort, Lawson, and KDDI. Participants will use HashPort’s non-custodial wallet, while the store will process transactions through HashPort’s checkout system, meaning merchants do not need to open or manage a crypto wallet. Separately, Japanese payments company Netstars has launched Stablecoin Pay and is accepting applications from merchants that want to take multiple stablecoins. At launch, the service supports USDC, USDT, and the yen-denominated stablecoin JPYC on the Solana and Polygon networks. MetaMask is listed as the supported wallet, and the merchant payment fee is set at 0.98%. The update points to a broader push to bring stablecoin-based payments into retail and merchant checkout flows in Japan through existing payment infrastructure rather than direct wallet management by stores.