DoCoMo muscles up its financial services

DoCoMo revealed that the number of applications to use its credit service DCMX mini hit 150 thousand in one month after the service's rollout in April 2006. DCMX mini is an entry-level credit service enabled on mobile phones with a limited credit line (see our glossary for details).

Starting May 26, 2006, DoCoMo also began offering feature-rich DCMX credit service that can be used on 3G phones with mobile wallet functionality.

At the same time, DoCoMo announced that the number of subscribers to Mitsui-Sumitomo Card iD service reached 400,000 after the service's rollout in December 2005. Mitsui-Sumitomo Card iD is a debit card incorporated into the mobile wallet handset.

Both DCMX and Mitsui-Sumitomo Card iD are offered under the iD brand, thus retailers with iD-branded scanners can accept them for payments. There were around 30 thousand retail locations equipped with iD-branded scanners in Japan by April 2006 and DoCoMo plans to increase that number up to 150 thousand by the end of 2006.