Rakuten to accept bitcoins

The chief executive officer of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, Hiroshi Mikitani reiterated that the firm intends to accept bitcoin at some stage, at a company financial conference in Tokyo today.

Rakuten, considered as a rival to Amazon, is the largest e-commerce conglomerate in Japan and one of the largest in the world. It also operates banking services, insurance, media, travel and booking, a professional baseball team etc. It is publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of over $21 billion.

Without revealing a precise timeframe in which they will start accepting the digital currency, Mikitani said "We are thinking about [accepting bitcoin] and we probably will... We would like to be open."

The Rakuten Financial Conference included some of the most distinguished figures from the international payments industry- PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and James Anderson, senior vice President for mobile and emerging payments at MasterCard.

If the firm goes ahead in its plan, it would become one of the largest companies to accept bitcoin payments.