Japan

NTT DoCoMo has partnered with MasterCard Worldwide to enable its smartphone users to make contactless electronic payments in other countries.

The Japanese bank that pioneered card-free ATM transactions in Japan is expanding the service into neighboring prefectures.

Two of Japan's largest banks are heading the US$2.7 billion rescue of the bankrupt electronics giant.

Japan's Mizuho Financial Group admitted a securities valuation loss of some US$2 billion for the third quarter.

A regional bank in Gifu Prefecture now allows customers to withdraw cash, make deposits and check account balances through simple palm scans.

Nomura Holdings, Inc is reorganizing its global finance unit in Asia outside of Japan as part of a continuing overhaul of Japan’s biggest brokerage.

The Bank of Japan has extended its asset-purchasing scheme by US$128 billion to boost the moribund economy.

Tadahiro Matsushita, Minister of the Financial Services Agency, the banking industry regulator, committed suicide Monday.

Japan’s largest bank could invest billions of dollars to fund Australian home loans through other means.

Mizuho Corporate Bank and Akbank signed a cooperation agreement to finance mergers and acquisitions between both countries.

Nomura Holdings intends to save up to US$1 billion in a worldwide cost cutting program centered on its wholesale division.

Mizuho Bank Ltd, the banking unit of Mizuho Financial Group, is set to finance more mergers and acquisitions abroad with a US$2 billion credit line from the government.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. have loaned a record US$515 million overseas.

Japan's biggest bank has suspended another London-based trader over the widening LIBOR interest-rate rigging scandal. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. said one trader has been told to be on stand-by at home but withheld further comment. The trader is a non-Japanese who worked for the bank in London. The bank had earlier suspended two other London-based traders because of their suspected involvement in the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal while working for Dutch lender Rabobank. The scandal saw Britain's Barclays PLC fined £290 million after admitting that it attempted to manipulate LIBOR and EURIBOR rates between 2005 and 2009. LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offered Rate, is a flagship instrument used as an interest rate benchmark throughout the world, while EURIBOR is the Eurozone equivalent.

Mizuho Financial Group Inc has increased loans overseas by 25% from a year earlier in March and now looks to expand lending by another 30%.

Nomura Holdings CEO Kenichi Watanabe resigned yesterday in an insider trading scandal that has again smeared the reputation of Japan's biggest investment bank.