Mercari, Inc. (the "Company") and its subsidiary, Merpay, Inc. ("Merpay"), are announced that, at a meeting of their Board of Directors respectively, they have resolved to launch a credit card business in order to strengthen Mercari Group's credit business. In January of this year, the Company made changes to its management structure to further strengthen the business foundation of Mercari Group. In addition, the Company is promoting the creation of synergies and business efficiency by strengthening collaboration between its Japan Region Group companies (Mercari Group's domestic business) in the two domains of Marketplace and Fintech.

In Fintech, which is Merpay's domain, the Company is making steady progress with its business objective for this fiscal year: promoting circular finance by strengthening Group synergy. Merpay provides a deferred payment service called Merpay Smart Payments, as well as a small-sum loan service called Merpay Smart Money. For these services, rather than using the common form of credit based on generally available data, Merpay leverages real user data from the Mercari app.

The number of users of these services is steadily increasing, with Merpay Smart Payments receiving particularly favorable reviews for its ease of use and payment management features. These include allowing the user to check their payment details on the Mercari app, set maximum spending limits, and make payments with their Mercari sales balance. In entering this new market, the Company will strive for further expansion of the credit business, which has many unique features.

By leveraging all of Mercari Group's strengths and allowing more users to take advantage of Merpay's credit business, which will be a key to further growth over the mid-to-long term, the Company will further bolster Group synergy by improving collaboration between the purchase and sale of items in the Marketplace business and payment and credit services in the Fintech business. The Company plans to begin operations for its new credit card business in November 2022 (subject to change). Special expenses for launching this business are less than the amount deemed to be significant by the Timely Disclosure Rules.