Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is now letting users convert earned loyalty points into three cryptocurrencies: bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and bitcoin cash (BCH).
According to the company’s announcement, the service is being provided by the e-commerce giant’s cryptocurrency trading service, Rakuten Wallet, and is meant to help newcomers into the space by reducing entry barriers with an easy way to access the market. The announcement reads:
Through the launch of the new service, Rakuten Wallet hopes to reduce the barriers of entry to crypto asset trading by providing an easy and more accessible way for new users to start, including novice users who are interested in crypto asset trading with no prior experience.
Rakuten’s announcement details only regulate Rakuten Super Points can be exchanged for cryptocurrency, which means “Limited Time Points” cannot be exchanged. One Rakuten Super Point is worth one yen (around $0.0091) in cryptocurrency, and there’s a minimum 100 super point requirement per conversion.
There are, however, limits to how may Rakuten Super Points users can convert into cryptocurrencies. According to the e-commerce giant, “Diamond” members can convert up to 50,000 points per transaction, with a 500,000 point limit being imposed per month. Regular members will have a 30,000 point limit per transaction, and can only convert up to 100,000 per month.
Rakuten Wallet is a licensed cryptocurrency exchange in Japan, launched earlier this year. Rakuten itself has been accepting cryptocurrency payments since 2015, when it added a bitcoin payment option on its U.S. website thanks to bitcoin wallet provider Bitnet.
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