Rakuten Wallet adds XRP
Rakuten Wallet announced it has added support for XRP, enabling buying, selling and payments with the token across more than 5 million merchants and tapping a loyalty‑points ecosystem tied to 100M+ platform users. Social reporting estimated the change could drive between $230 million and $1 billion of buy pressure from point‑redemption flows. The rollout highlights continued integration of crypto assets into mainstream fintech platforms. (x.com)
Rakuten Wallet has added XRP, extending the token from a trading app into Rakuten’s payments and loyalty network in Japan. (coindesk.com) The rollout began April 15, 2026, and lets users buy XRP with Rakuten Points, hold it in Rakuten Wallet, and convert it into Rakuten Cash for spending through Rakuten Pay. CoinDesk reported the change reaches 44 million Rakuten Pay users. (coindesk.com) Rakuten Pay says its network covers more than 5 million merchant locations in Japan. Rakuten’s broader membership base in Japan is more than 100 million IDs, according to crypto trade press citing the company’s ecosystem figures. (coindesk.com) (cryptonews.com) The mechanics matter here: shoppers are not handing XRP directly to a cashier in most cases. They convert points into XRP inside Rakuten Wallet, then load Rakuten Cash, Rakuten’s stored-value money, for payment at checkout. (cryptonews.com) (global.rakuten.com) Rakuten has been building this bridge between crypto and everyday spending for years. In February 2021, Rakuten Group said users could charge Rakuten Cash with Bitcoin and other crypto assets and spend it at Rakuten Pay and Rakuten Point Card merchants. (global.rakuten.com) The loyalty piece also predates this week’s XRP addition. In December 2019, Rakuten Wallet launched a service that let users exchange Rakuten Super Points for crypto assets through the wallet app. (global.rakuten.com) Rakuten Wallet itself has operated spot trading since August 2019 and later added margin trading. Rakuten Group described the company in 2024 as its crypto-asset exchange arm and said it had been expanding into Web3 services since 2023. (global.rakuten.com 1) (global.rakuten.com 2) Some social-media estimates put possible XRP buying tied to point conversions between about $230 million and $1 billion, but those figures are projections, not company guidance. Separate crypto reports have pointed to more than 3 trillion Rakuten Points outstanding, worth roughly $23 billion, as the pool behind those scenarios. (whale-alert.io) (cryptonews.com) Rakuten’s own recent filings show why the payments side gets attention inside the group. The company moved the Rakuten Pay online-payment business and Rakuten Points online business into its FinTech segment in September 2023, and Rakuten said in February 2026 that expanding ecosystem synergies remains a priority. (global.rakuten.com 1) (global.rakuten.com 2) What changes now is not that Rakuten discovered crypto in 2026. It is that XRP has been slotted into an existing system of wallet trading, loyalty points, stored-value payments, and millions of checkout locations that Rakuten had already built. (global.rakuten.com 1) (global.rakuten.com 2) (global.rakuten.com 3)
