This is what real-world crypto adoption looks like at scale. Rakuten - Japan's largest e-commerce company - added XRP as a payment option in its Rakuten Pay app on Monday. The move gives 44 million users the ability to spend XRP at more than 5 million merchants across Japan.
Users can buy XRP using Rakuten loyalty points, hold it in Rakuten Wallet, and spend it directly through the app at stores that accept Rakuten Pay. The company has over 3 trillion loyalty points in circulation - real spending power that can now flow into XRP. A senior Ripple manager called it "one of the most important XRP milestones" to date.
Most crypto payment deals involve small companies or niche platforms. Rakuten is one of the biggest consumer platforms in Japan, with over 100 million registered members and a massive retail network. The key shift: this integration moves XRP from "trading asset" to "thing people actually use to buy stuff" - and it's happening in one of the world's most digitally advanced countries.
Having 44 million users with the ability to spend XRP doesn't mean they will. But embedding crypto into a loyalty program with trillions of points already in circulation removes one of the biggest barriers - getting tokens into people's hands in the first place.
