The Incident/Update
On December 24, 2019, Rakuten Wallet Inc., a consolidated subsidiary of Japan’s e-commerce giant Rakuten Group, launched a groundbreaking service allowing users to convert Rakuten Super Points directly into cryptocurrency. The move effectively connects one of the world’s largest loyalty point ecosystems—spanning over 100 million Rakuten members—with the digital asset market, starting with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). The service launched with zero handling charges and a minimum conversion threshold of just 100 Rakuten Super Points, with one point equivalent to one Japanese yen when converted to crypto assets. For context, Bitcoin traded at approximately $7,210 on the day of the launch, while Ethereum sat at $127.80, according to Kraken’s daily market report.
Technical Post-Mortem
The conversion mechanism operates through the Rakuten Wallet smartphone application, which had been offering crypto spot trading services since August 19, 2019. Users authenticate via their existing Rakuten credentials, select “Points Exchange,” and choose their target cryptocurrency and amount. The system processes Standard Points only—excluding Limited Time Points and points exchanged from partner services. Transaction limits are tiered by membership status: Diamond members can convert up to 50,000 points per transaction and 500,000 per month, while standard members are capped at 30,000 points per transaction and 100,000 per month. Notably, the conversion is one-directional—crypto assets cannot be converted back into Rakuten Super Points. Rakuten Wallet operates as a registered virtual currency exchange company with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau under Japan’s Payment Services Act, a regulatory framework that had been tightened following the Coincheck hack of January 2018.
Governance Impact
This integration carries significant implications for how loyalty programs interact with decentralized financial infrastructure. By converting loyalty points into blockchain-native assets, Rakuten is effectively tokenizing reward balances that were previously siloed within its closed ecosystem. The zero-fee structure suggests that Rakuten absorbs conversion costs as a customer acquisition strategy for its crypto wallet service—a calculated bet that point-to-crypto users will eventually engage in broader trading activity. For DeFi proponents, this represents a stepping stone toward onboarding non-technical users into digital asset ownership, even if the actual DeFi interaction remains limited at this stage. At the time of launch, total value locked across DeFi protocols stood at approximately $678 million, with MakerDAO, Compound, and dYdX dominating the landscape.
TVL Shifts
While the immediate liquidity impact of Rakuten’s points-to-crypto service was negligible—DeFi’s total TVL hovered around $678 million according to DeFi Pulse data—the symbolic value was substantial. Japan’s Financial Services Agency had been cultivating a regulated crypto environment, and Rakuten’s entry signaled institutional confidence. The broader DeFi ecosystem at the end of 2019 was still in its nascent phase: MakerDAO accounted for the majority of locked value, Compound was growing its lending pools, and Synthetix was beginning to gain traction. The Kraken daily report for December 24 showed $85.5 million traded across all markets, with Bitcoin dominating at $68.8 million in volume. ETH trading reached $6.29 million on the exchange, while XRP recorded $3.08 million and Cosmos (ATOM) saw $1.4 million in volume.
Long-Term Prognosis
Rakuten’s points-to-crypto bridge foreshadowed a broader trend of traditional financial ecosystems building on-ramps into digital assets. The service eliminated a critical friction point—the need for bank transfers or credit card transactions to acquire cryptocurrency—by leveraging existing loyalty point balances. For the DeFi ecosystem, this kind of institutional on-ramp was precisely what the sector needed to grow beyond its early-adopter base. Looking at the data, DeFi’s TVL would surge from roughly $600 million in late 2019 to over $15 billion by the end of 2020, fueled by yield farming incentives and the Compound governance token launch. Rakuten Wallet itself would go on to introduce margin trading services in early 2020, expanding its crypto offerings. The Christmas Eve 2019 launch served as a quiet but meaningful milestone: a major global retailer acknowledging that loyalty points and cryptocurrency were, at their core, both digital stores of value—and that the bridge between them was worth building.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making investment decisions.
100 million Rakuten users getting access to crypto in 2019 was ahead of its time. most of the world is still catching up
100 million Rakuten users getting crypto access in 2019 was genuinely ahead of its time. took years for western platforms to catch up with anything comparable
100 points = 100 yen minimum was genius. lowered the barrier to basically nothing. wonder why no other loyalty program copied this
Zero fees and a 100-point minimum is how you onboard normal people. More platforms should copy this approach.
exactly. the real innovation was meeting users where they already were instead of making them learn wallets and seed phrases first
zero conversion fees and 100 yen minimum. Rakuten understood that friction kills adoption. most crypto on-ramps still charge 2-3% and have $50 minimums
Rakuten was one of the few big platforms that actually made crypto usable for normal people in Japan. Zero fees on conversion was the killer feature