Toranoana, a major physical and online retailer of independently published comics (doujinshi), announced on October 8 that it has introduced a new, local payment method for its doujin mail order service. Payments via Visa and Mastercard were abruptly suspended for the service in August last year, and have been unavailable ever since.
At the time, Toranoana did not disclose the exact reason for cutting ties with international credit card brands, but given the platform’s reputation for hosting adult content (particularly doujinshi targeted towards women), it is likely they faced the same kind of pressure platforms like Steam and itch.io have been dealing with as of recent.
But as of October 8, Toranoana newly supports transactions via au PAY, a local Japanese smartphone payment service with around 38.4 million users. This comes only a few days after DLsite, another famous doujinshi platform that had Visa and Mastercard transactions suspended, announced its own alternative. While DLsite’s new payment system is partly in-house (it uses account IDs issued by the platform’s parent company viviON, but an external mobile bank), Toranoana’s alternative is simply an existing service provided by a telecom company. However, it still circumvents the role of credit card companies and other payment processors between the user and the platform.
On the other hand, given that au PAY requires a Japanese phone number, the service will likely not be usable for purchases on Toranoana outside of Japan. According to the official homepage, alternatives currently available are JCB, American Express and Diners Club credit cards. Visa and Mastercard transactions are not likely to come back, according to the platform’s FAQ.
Speaking on the issue of payment processors’ censorship of adult media, Japanese politician and former assemblyman Zenko Kurishita recently commented that the most viable solution would be the diversification of payment methods, and whether spontaneously or deliberately, this seems to be the direction Japanese platforms are heading towards.
