Summary [Dave Birch] Why are we all so interested in Japanese e-money statistics? Setting aside that when I say “we”, I of course mean “me”, it’s because of the clues it may contain to the evolution of electronic money in a rich mobile-centric environment. According to the Nomura Research Institutethe Japanese e-money market grew from 180 billion yen in 2006 to 690 billion yen in 2007, including EDY’s 100 billion yen share and Suica’s 50 billion yen share. The market is expected to be worth 2.8 trillion yen in 2011. With the spread of e-money, concerns have been raised that the money supply –one of the elements that the Bank of Japan uses to map out its monetary policy — may not reflect the actual state of the economy, as the money supply data does not include e-money (and nor, I suspect, does anyone else’s, although I’d love to hear from anyone who can prove me wrong).

Technorati Tags: e-purse, mobile

In the Japanese statistics the money supply in March was 80 trillion yen. Of this, only 4.5 trillion yen is currency from small-scale settlements, which is likely to be substituted by e-money. So e-money currently accounts for 180 billion of a 4.5 trillion market (ie, 4 percent). Hence one can only agree with Hideo Kumano, chief economist of the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute Inc, who said that

E-money is not likely to have an immediate influence on the central bank’s monetary policy in the near future.

How different to China, where non-existent e-money in virtual worlds is already, according to the government there, threatening monetary policy.

These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]

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