About the business alliance contract for the construction and provision of a business-to-business payment platform 企業間決済プラットフォームの構築・提供に関する業務提携契約について
～日本経済の持続的な成長への貢献～

Mizuho Bank, Ltd. (President: Masahiko Kato, hereinafter referred to as "Mizuho Bank"), GMO Epsilon, Inc. (President & Chief Executive Officer: Tomoyuki Murakami, hereinafter referred to as "GMO-EP") and GMO Payment Gateway, Inc. (President & Chief Executive Officer: Issei Ainoura, hereinafter referred to as "GMO-PG") have entered into a corporate payment as of Thursday, October 31, 2024. We have concluded a business alliance contract for the construction and provision of the platform.

The new business-to-business payment platform will be built using the online infrastructure of payments" fincode byGMO" provided by GMO-EP and will be promoted by Mizuho Bank and GMO-EP. GMO-PG will work with GMO-EP to provide advice on the construction and promotion of the project.

Currently, due to the decline in the working population due to the declining birthrate and aging population, companies are facing a major challenge of a shortage of human resources. In addition, the environment surrounding inter-company transactions is changing drastically, such as the trend toward digitalization triggered by the start of the the invoice system ・Electronic Books Preservation Act and the abolition of bills and checks, and one of the major themes is the review and efficiency of business processes.

Responding to this situation is not only an important management issue for companies, but also a great opportunity to increase corporate value and competitiveness through the use of digital technology and new payment method.

Mizuho has been working to solve customers' issues and support their growth by providing finance and non-finance functions inside and outside the Group through Mizuho Digital Connect, an initiative to support the resolution of a wide variety of issues faced by corporate customers. On the other hand, services related to payment and other business-to-business transactions are not necessarily connected to services that are responsible for the preceding and following business processes, and in some cases, the use of different services and the transfer of data have become new business issues.

GMO-EP and GMO-PG provide services based on payment that support online, cashless, and DX. In the course of providing online infrastructure of payments" fincode byGMO" to businesses, GMO-EP confronted the environment surrounding customers and the issues they were facing, and was considering new ways to solve and support their growth.

Against this backdrop, we have decided to build and provide a business-to-company payment platform that seamlessly connects a wide variety of business efficiency services and payment services by leveraging the strengths and assets of each company through business alliances.

The business-to-business payment platform is scheduled to be launched in FY2025 by utilizing GMO-EP's "fincode byGMO" and adding functions necessary for business-to-business transactions and linkage functions with services related to business processes before and after payment.

"fincode byGMO" provides a simple and unified API that allows smooth linkage between various systems and payment services, and provides functions necessary for business-to-business transactions to be added in the future with the same API.

As a first step, we have agreed to proceed with discussions in the direction of mutual cooperation with freee K.K. (CEO: Daisuke Sasaki, hereinafter referred to as "freee"), which has approximately 540,000 ^(*1) offices as users.

By realizing such mutual cooperation, we aim to eliminate the "business division" between "ordering and billing" and "using payment services" and to be able to seamlessly execute a series of business processes.

Going forward, the business-to-business payment platform will continue to provide a wide range of highly convenient payment services by openly linking with various business efficiency services, rather than being limited to specific services.

[Overview of the business-to-business payment platform]

■What is Mizuho Digital Connect?

This is an initiative in which Mizuho Bank, Ltd. and Mizuho Research & Technologies Co., Ltd. work together with group companies and partner companies to support the DX of corporate customers.
https://www.mizuhobank.co.jp/corporate/b_support/d_connect/index.html

About "fincode byGMO"

fincode byGMO is an online infrastructure of payments that helps startups grow, not only solving payment field challenges before and after the launch of new services, but also seamlessly delivering the scalable value required as business phases evolve. In the PMF ^(*2) phase, it is possible to implement the payment system with a short lead time by providing a test environment immediately, prompt web review, and SDK ^(*3) and UI components ^(*4) that reduce development man-hours. In addition, in the growth phase, REST APIs ^(*5) and other extended functions will be used to support the "next step" of the introducer, such as "support for unique payment flows," "addition of payment method to expand users," "addition of subscription plans," and "expansion to a platform-based business model." By providing these functions with no initial or monthly costs, and a fee structure that minimizes "hidden costs" such as account maintenance fees and transfer fees, we reduce the burden of cost management for operators who have introduced the service and provide an environment where they can concentrate on the growth of their services.
https://www.fincode.jp/

• *2 Abbreviation for Product Market Fit.
• *3 Abbreviation for Software Development Kit. fincode byGMO provides a library that makes it easy to incorporate APIs.
• *4 A function that generates and provides a credit card information input form.
• *5 Abbreviation for Representational State Transfer API. fincode byGMO allows you to work with data such as payment and subscriptions through a resource-oriented and easy-to-understand REST API.

GMO Epsilon offers two payment processing services, "Epsilon by GMO" and "fincode byGMO," which are used by more than 40,000 e-commerce businesses as of the end of September 2024, and are available for initial costs and transaction processing fees ^(*6). It's free to use. fincode byGMO is an online payment service for startups designed to meet a variety of business needs. It enables rapid deployment of payment systems and is ideal for E-commerce, as well as platform and subscription business models.
In addition, in order to support the smooth cash flow of e-commerce businesses, we also provide finance-related services such as the sales-linked business card "Cycle by GMO" and lending and Remittance Service.
TSE As a consolidated company of GMO Payment Gateway, a prime listed company, we provide an environment where you can use it with peace of mind with PrivacyMark certification and security standards that comply with PCI DSS and ISMS.

• *6 Transaction processing fee is a fee charged for each communication with a credit card company for credit card authorization (acquisition of an authorization number) and billing.