Rakuten Card Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Group Inc., has established Rakuten Fintech Vietnam Co. in Ho Chi Minh City as an overseas center of fintech system development.

The Japanese credit firm set up the fully owned Vietnam unit with capital of $5.2 million on Oct. 12 to promote its fintech business.

Rakuten Fintech Vietnam will start operations next spring to engage in in-house system development initially, Tokyo-based Rakuten Card said.

Rakuten Card currently maintains Rakuten Card USA Inc. in San Mateo, California, to offer financial products and services to member shops and individual customers and Taiwan Rakuten Card Inc. in Taipei to issue credit cards.

Rakuten Card is advancing into Vietnam to turn it into a core of its fintech system development because the Southeast Asian country is aggressively fostering IT human resources and emerging as a major location for offshore system development. (NNA/ Kyodo)

==Kyodo

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