Japanese convenience store giant Lawson is set to launch a pilot program allowing customers to complete transactions using stablecoins. A report from Nikkei indicates that the trial will take place at Lawson’s Takanawa Gateway City location in Tokyo, with plans to begin accepting the yen-denominated stablecoin JPYC in early August.
The initiative operates as a proof-of-concept trial spearheaded by KDDI, Japan’s second-largest telecommunications operator. To facilitate the payments, KDDI is partnering with crypto wallet firm HashPort, which provides the underlying technology to support JPYC transactions. As the third-largest convenience store chain in Japan—ranking just behind Seven-Eleven and FamilyMart—Lawson brings massive scale to the experiment, boasting 14,697 domestic stores and reporting over 3.02 trillion yen ($18.68 billion) in net sales for the 2026 fiscal year.
The digital asset selected for the trial, JPYC, launched last October as the country’s first registered yen stablecoin following the implementation of strict local regulatory licensing requirements for issuers in 2023. The stablecoin has seen rapid adoption, with its onchain circulation recently surpassing 2 billion yen ($12.36 million).
Engineered to maintain a strict 1:1 peg with the Japanese yen, JPYC operates across multiple blockchain networks, including Avalanche, Ethereum, Polygon, and Kaia. In strict compliance with Japan’s Payment Services Act, issuer JPYC Inc. fully backs all circulating tokens with 100% reserves held securely in yen deposits and government bonds. The convenience store pilot follows other major ecosystem moves for the stablecoin issuer, which recently teamed up with Metaplanet and Progmat to conduct a joint study on digital credit leveraging bitcoin, stablecoins, and security tokens.
