Japan's top customer-to-customer (C2C) ticket exchange marketplace, Ticket Camp, announced last week that it has become the first in the Japanese ticket industry to accept bitcoin. The site has about 5 million users and processes approximately 5.8 billion yen per month.

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First in Ticket Industry to Accept Bitcoin

One of Japan's most popular ticket marketplaces, Ticket Camp, announced last week that it has become the first in the Japanese ticket industry to accept bitcoin, starting on August 17.

The marketplace is operated by Hunza Co. Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mixi Group. The company describes in the announcement:

Hunza Co., Ltd. develops and manages the largest C2C ticket sales site 'Ticket Camp' in Japan, with the vision of creating web services that become the culture of the world.

Similar to online ticket exchange Stubhub in the U.S., Ticket Camp allows users to buy, sell, and request event tickets between each other. "Sellers decide on the price they want to sell at and list their tickets for sale on the marketplace," the Mixi Group detailed. "In addition, Ticket Camp uses an escrow system where payment is held by Hunza until the tickets arrive in the hands of the buyer, ensuring safe and secure transactions."

The site has no membership or registration fees but takes a percentage of the purchase amount. "Ticket Camp's earnings come from transaction fees set at 13% of the ticket sale price, divided between the ticket seller and buyer," the Mixi Group wrote. Registration takes one minute, their website states.

Ticket Camp is only two years old, but has grown to 5 million monthly users, according to Hunza's press release. It processes about 5.8 billion yen monthly as of December 2016, or approximately $53 million. Google Play Store shows 7,008 ratings for the app of 4 stars on average. On Apple's iTunes store, there are 15,007 ratings averaging 4.5 stars.

Bitcoin Payments Accepted

The website's bitcoin payments are processed by one of Japan's largest bitcoin exchanges Coincheck, which claims to have signed up over 5,000 merchants across Japan to accept the digital currency already. The merchant payment processor is currently facilitating a roll out of the bitcoin payment option at 260,000 stores across the country. These stores are using a payment app by Recruit Lifestyle which has partnered with Coincheck. 334 Meganesuper eyeglasses store locations have already begun accepting bitcoin using this app.