XRP Price Rises on Japanese E-commerce Rakuten Pay Integration
Ripple (XRP) price rose to $1.38 after Rakuten Pay integrated the token for Payments, triggering fresh buying in the cryptocurrency market on Wednesday. Trading volume stands at $2.4 billion, down by 25% over the last 24 hours, while the market cap of XRP topped $84 billion.
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is adding XRP (XRP) inside its Rakuten Pay app and Rakuten Wallet, giving roughly 44 million users the ability to use XRP as a payment method at more than 5 million merchant locations across Japan.
Reports from outlets say users will be able to spot trade XRP in the app, buy it with Rakuten Points, and hold it in Rakuten Wallet, then fund Rakuten Cash to pay in stores and online.
Ripple’s senior ecosystem growth manager Tatsuya Kohrogi described this as “one of the most significant XRP milestones,” highlighting that Rakuten Pay is a mainstream commerce app, not a crypto-native product, which puts XRP in front of people who may never have used crypto before.
Rakuten’s loyalty system has more than 3 trillion Rakuten Points in circulation, estimated at around 23 billion dollars, and those points can now be converted into XRP according to multiple reports from Tokenpost and Bitcoin.com.
That effectively turns a closed rewards system into a crypto on-ramp, letting users move from points to XRP and then into everyday payments without ever touching a traditional exchange interface.
Rakuten already supported bitcoin, ether, and bitcoin cash in earlier integrations, so adding XRP places it alongside other major assets in one of Japan’s largest consumer ecosystems.
For XRP, which has often been framed around institutional and cross-border payment use cases, this is a notable shift toward visible retail payments adoption.
Crypto analysts said real utility is now possible at scale, but the real test is whether users actually choose XRP over yen or other options in their daily spending.
Rakuten’s XRP rollout plugs a major cryptocurrency directly into one of Japan’s biggest payments and loyalty networks, turning loyalty points into a potential XRP funnel for tens of millions of users.
If even a modest share of that 23 billion dollar points pool flows into XRP and is used in everyday commerce, it could strengthen XRP’s real-world utility narrative and encourage similar moves from other large consumer platforms. XRP Slides to $1.33, Tracking Below Target Price
