＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
Recently, we have been hearing the term “EC 3.0 era.” “EC” stands for “Electronic Commerce,” or “electronic commerce” (internet shopping), and is also called “E-commerce.” Prime Minister Abe has been enthusiastically stating that “the cashless era is upon us.”
This shows that consumer behavior, which traditionally relied on “cash payment” in “physical stores,” has shifted to “credit card payment” in the “Internet market.”
1. What is the “EC 3.0 era”?
The “e-commerce market” has expanded rapidly due to the rapid spread of the Internet.
Like the way Windows versions are displayed, the trend is to distinguish the same words by numbering them, such as “1.0” and “2.0”, when the environment surrounding them changes with the times.
The “EC 1.0 era” refers to the era when online shopping was used as a kind of shopping tool. At that time, most payments were made in cash at physical stores. In this era, it was common knowledge that products were purchased in stores, and online shops without physical stores were considered unreliable. This was a stage when no one had smartphones, and personal computers were not widely used.
The “EC 2.0 era” is a stage where e-commerce has progressed slightly from the “EC 1.0 era” and has become as important as brick-and-mortar stores. Everyone now has a smartphone, and at the same time, high-speed internet can be enjoyed at low cost, making it easy to view images and video media and visit websites.
The “EC 3.0 era” is a dramatic advancement from the “EC 2.0 era,” in which e-commerce has become mainstream and purchasing behavior can now be completed with “credit card payment” in the “e-commerce market” without having to go to a physical store. This means that we are now in an era where online shops are no longer just one place for consumers to shop, but function as a platform for all kinds of shopping behavior.
2. Global E-commerce Market Size
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced in April 2018 that the global e-commerce market size for 2018 is estimated at 308 trillion yen, and it is expected to continue to grow at double digits until 2021, reaching 539 trillion yen in 2021.
According to eMarketer, February 2018, China ranked first in the world’s e-commerce market size in 2017 with 122.6 trillion yen (an increase of 35.1% from the previous year), the United States came in second with 50 trillion yen (an increase of 16.3% from the previous year), the United Kingdom came in third with 12.3 trillion yen (an increase of 17.1% from the previous year), Japan came in fourth with 10.4 trillion yen (an increase of 6.0% from the previous year), and South Korea came in sixth with 6.1 trillion yen (an increase of 20.9% from the previous year).
3. Issues for expanding Japan’s “e-commerce market”
(1) Year-on-year growth rate is low and needs improvement
Among the top 10 countries with the largest e-commerce markets, Japan has the lowest year-on-year growth rate, at just single digits. The following reasons have been cited as the causes:
① Japanese corporate culture is old, and many companies are still unable to adapt to onlineization.
② Seniors in particular tend to use cash for payments and are reluctant to use credit cards.
③ E-commerce has not progressed in sectors with large market sizes, such as the food industry.
(2) Contribution of new business formats to increasing EC usage
In addition to Amazon, Yahoo! Shopping, and Rakuten Ichiba, the expansion of new business formats such as Mercari and ZOZOTOWN is expected to contribute to increasing EC usage.
(3) Strong promotion of cashless society
In July 2018, the Cashless Promotion Council, consisting of industry, government and academia, was established to promote efforts to realize a cashless society.
Prior to the establishment of the association, the “Cashless Vision,” announced in April 2018, aims to achieve a 40% cashless payment ratio as early as possible in the “Payment Reform Declaration” in preparation for the Osaka World Expo (2025).
After the consumption tax increase in October 2019, a “points reward for cashless payments” will be implemented as a stimulus measure to promote cashless payments.
In addition to the above, the government is planning the following measures to promote cashless payments:
① Improving convenience for foreign visitors to Japan
② Creating an environment where credit cards can be used safely
Regarding the “safety of credit cards, etc.”, the following are some representative recent incidents:
One of them was the unauthorized access incident at PayPay in December 2018.
When registering for “PayPay,” a computer randomly tries combinations of “16-digit credit card number,” “expiration date,” and “3-digit security code,” and an incident occurred in which a hit was registered as “someone else’s credit card number” and used to make a purchase. This means that even if a credit card had not been “stolen” or “skimmed,” there was a risk of fraudulent use. In other words, even people who had not registered for PayPay could be at risk of becoming “victims.”
The other was the unauthorized access incident by a third party to “7pay,” a smartphone payment service that can be used at Seven-Eleven, which occurred in July 2019. Due to poor security management, such as not implementing “two-step authentication,” the service was forced to “terminate at the end of September 2019.”
I believe that these bad cases should serve as a lesson and a bad example to other companies, and that other companies’ services also need to establish perfect fraud prevention measures and safety systems as soon as possible.
③ Expanded use of credit card payments in the public sector
As an aside, as a member of the baby boomer generation, I have been using credit cards since my first year in the workforce, and have been using computers for over 25 years in my career, so although I am a beginner who has only been using smartphones for two years, I have no resistance to e-commerce itself. Therefore, I think that most seniors younger than the baby boomer generation will be able to adapt to e-commerce easily.