Nomura Reasearch Institute(NRI) define “Enterprise Currence(EC)” as points, mileage and electronic money that are currently used by many companies and customers. And they anticipate EC would be very common concept in near future.
EC is very developed in Japan. Many people use electronic money for taking a train and buying something at a convenience store. Edy and Suica are representative example of electronic money. Recently telecommunication company and logistics company aggresively drive their electronic money business. And milege and coupon service have a strong effect as marketing tools. And OK Cashbag point service which is most popular and well-distributed membership point service in Korea even exceeded break-even-point several years ago. NRI clearly define that EC should be common and exchangeable between companies. Because it has characteristics of currency. From the several cases, EC is no more one of marketing tools like coupon and membership point. It has developed differently. And it’s making its own area and applied to many companies.
Why does EC grow fast? NRI explain this phenomenon using the concept that market is extremely devided into “Front-line-type companies” and “Enabler-type-companies”. If you google the report of NRI, you will get more detail explanation(Just type “Nomura enterprise currency” and push “enter” button.)
What would be the next? The showing up of standard EC is the foreseeable consequence. NRI suggests some possibilities such as substitution of company paper, trading center for EC and so on. And there are basic factors behind these possibilities-partnership over companies and countries. Have more parnters, get more users. So it’s important to standardize system and platform for more active partnership and globalization. It’s time to search for an opportunity of enterprise currency.