ARIGATOBANK: Building A Wealth Redistribution Ecosystem

In entrepreneurship, the main goal is not to make a profit but rather to create value. Entrepreneurs use innovation and creative solutions to combat the issue at hand. “As we all know the gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding all over the world and most people are worried about money. It is like we are dominated by money. So I was wondering how we can change this mindset of everyone because I want everyone to focus on what they love,” shares Mr. Yamaguchi.

KotaYamaguchi, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of ARIGATOBANK, had entered the industry with Yusaku Maezawa, the owner, as a culmination of personal projects like money distribution and basic income experiments. In his journey, Mr. Yamaguchi has been actively involved in launching several companies like Sprinklr Japan, OYO Japan, etc.
Leveraging this experience in the startup, he established ARIGATOBANK Co., Ltd. to create a new flow of money in the world.

KotaYamaguchi
In the current field of Web3, people are earning money while playing some games or just by walking. Similarly, ARIGATOBANK enables users to earn money through in-app campaigns or by playing games. Mr. Yamaguchi wanted to create a service that reaches those who need the power of money.

Recently, ARIGATOBANK announced the service renewal of the platform application ‘kifutown’ that allows individuals to easily donate to each other. The new concept introduced is “Fun things can turn into money” and the service has been renamed “arigatobank”. He added, “We have done a lot of trial and error in kifutown. Through this experience, We would like to create a service for our users to enjoy their life by earning money while having fun..”

In our recent talk with Kota Yamaguchi, we walked through the journey of ARIGATOBANK and its exceptional offerings in the industry. Mr. Yamaguchi also enlightened us about the plans for the company.
1.Could you provide our readers with a brief overview of ARIGATOBANK?

ARIGATO BANK is a Japanese fintech company established in 2022. We offer a payment service called arigatobank, which is downloaded by 8 million users within only half a year after launching. In addition to the payment service, we are developing a new feature which is related to web3.0.
2.What were some of the founding factors that led to the conception of ARIGATOBANK?

As we all know the gap between rich and poor is rapidly expanding all over the world and most people are worried about money. It is like we are dominated by money. So, I was wondering how we can change this mindset of everyone because I want everyone to focus on what they love instead of focusing on money. We believe that people would be happier if they got enough money and used it for what they want to do. Keeping this in mind, I thought of an idea to build a wealth redistribution ecosystem by a non-official organization. With this objective, ARIGATOBANK developed a payment infrastructure at first.
3.What are the unique services and solutions that ARIGATO BANK offers to its customers?

As we have the concept “Earning money while having fun”, We have some content and campaigns in our service. For example, we plan to randomly give money to their payment account of arigatobank. That means the users might get money by only logging in to our service. And we are planning to offer other features and campaigns based on our concept. in near future.
4.How is ARIGATOBANK different from the rest of the fintech technology companies working in the same field?

Firstly, we have a huge 8 million user base although our service is quite new. We can access a lot of users easily if we launch new features and introduce some campaigns with external companies. Secondly, many of our members have strong knowledge of not only payment but also crypto assets and blockchain technology. So, I believe we should be able to integrate the payment service with crypto-related services.
5.How does ARIGATOBANK solve the problem of money-related issues through its solutions?

Our service has the potential to provide our users with a new way of earning money. We believe that we can make it possible for people to enjoy their life by earning money while having fun. In addition to it, we would like to introduce a new world like web3 to as many people as possible because it might benefit many people but it is still only used by limited people as of now.
6.Could you walk us through some of the methods ARIGATOBANK leverage to market its products?

Although web3 has been a new trend all over the world, it is still not for many people because of its complexity, especially in user interfaces. Web3 technology has not integrated with the existing payment service enough yet because skills and knowledge to develop business are quite different from each other. We are aiming to fill in this gap. As mentioned before, ARIGATO BANK, fortunately, has a lot of experts for not only payment but also crypto assets. We will leverage them and develop new products around Web 3 and payment services.
7.Challenges redefine the company’s path, according to you, what were the most challenging times in the journey?

The drastic pivot this year was the most challenging part of our journey. We offered a CtoC donation platform called “kifutown” as a first product and tried to boost the donation culture. However, to achieve our goal above, we have been open to any kind of new method or business. The donation platform is not the only solution we can offer. Considering successful and unsuccessful points around the donation platform and recognizing new trends and market situations around the fintech and Web3 area, we have decided to focus on a new business in Web3. As our members have been prioritizing our vision, mission, and value, which we specified in the first stage, in the pivot process management was trying not to widely separate from them and get everyone’s consensus.
8.According to you, what makes ARIGATOBANK exceptional?

It is hard to get a license to do a payment business in Japan due to some Japanese laws. Actually, Google and Paypal acquired Japanese payment companies when they started the business in Japan. In that situation, we believe our user base and expertise for web3 will be a great advantage. We recognize ourselves as a unique company because we think that other payment companies do not have enough knowledge for both payment and Web3 areas for now.
9.Could you outline the roadmap for the coming year?

First of all, we are going to update our current payment service to be safer and easier to use. Moreover, we will develop new features based on our new concept “Earning money while having fun”. We want to be a leader which integrates payment with web3 this year.
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