PayPay Securities Surpasses 1.82 Million Accounts, Overtakes Matsui Securities
- PayPay Securities reached 1.82 million accounts by end of June.
- Matsui Securities was overtaken in account numbers for the first time.
- Growth driven by POWL technology and PayPay IPO announcement.
- PayPay Securities is a rising force in Japan's online brokerage sector.
If you use a Japanese online broker to buy Japanese or US stocks, which one you pick—and the fees and products you get—now turns on a reshuffle in progress. PayPay Securities, riding its parent group's IPO theme, pushed account numbers to 1.82 million and passed veteran Matsui Securities. The online-broker pecking order has shifted.
Read the number closely. The July 29 release looked dull—"1.82 million accounts at end-June"—but its meaning is that it overtook long-established Matsui. The tool is POWL, letting users subscribe to new shares in offerings and IPOs straight from the app, paired with the PayPay group's own IPO theme to funnel huge payment-app users into brokerage accounts. It climbed not by cutting fees, but by pouring payment traffic into securities accounts.
In context: Japanese retail investing has grown on NISA expansion and zero-fee competition, and a platform holding vast payment users has a built-in customer-acquisition edge over Matsui, Rakuten and SBI. The old fee war is becoming an ecosystem-funnel war. Paths ahead: continued funneling forces rivals to sweeten perks; a cooling IPO theme slows growth; regulatory scrutiny of the funnel could brake it. For readers: judge a broker by what you actually trade—fees, FX conversion cost, and language support—not headline account rank. Those in the PayPay ecosystem gain most; others, less.