Credit Saison - Company History

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Financial history 1960–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1951
Founder Okamoto Torajiro (岡本虎二郎)
Founding location 東京都世田谷区
Core business at founding Instalment department store
Listed 1963
President Mizuno Katsumi President since 2021 (age 57, as of 2026)
Current priority Overseas expansion · Customer base growth Local lending in India and widening the membership base
Founding
In May 1951 Okamoto Torajiro founded Midoriya Co., an instalment department store, in Setagaya, Tokyo. It sold appliances, furniture and clothing on monthly instalments and took the repayments back over its own counters — a trade in which retailing and consumer finance were a single business. Midoriya listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in July 1963 and was designated to the First Section in June 1968. From about 1955 to 1965 it was the largest instalment department store in Japan, ahead of Marui, but it misread both its store network, scattering small shops across the whole Kanto region, and its diversification into hotel interiors and bowling, and its bad debts swelled to twice those of Marui. In March 1976 it entered a capital tie-up with Seibu Department Stores and became the financial core of the Saison group, changing its name to Seibu Credit in August 1980 and to Credit Saison in October 1989.
The Decision
The company has chosen, each time over, to stand outside any one camp. It became the financial core of the Seibu retail group, and yet in the brands it carried on its cards it leaned on no single international network. It added VISA and MasterCard in July 1988 and took on the issue of American Express in October 1997, giving it all four major global brands. In April 2004 it tied up with Takashimaya in the card business, sharing a membership base with a department store that had been a competitor of the old Seibu. In January 2006 it absorbed the UC Card membership business company of the Mizuho group — a reverse combination in which a retail-affiliated issuer took in a bank-backed one — and lifted the number of cards issued a further notch.
Today
More than half of revenue comes from cards, but close to half of the profit is made by the finance business. Of revenue of $3.5B (¥546bn) in the year to March 2026, the payment business accounted for $1.8B (¥277bn), more than half the total. Segment profit went the other way: the finance business — personal lending and credit guarantees — earned $299.1M (¥47bn) against the payment business’s $193.5M (¥31bn). Add property-related profit of $121.4M (¥19bn) and everything outside cards comes to two-thirds of the whole. That shape was settled by the consolidated net loss of $593.4M (¥56bn) in the year to March 2009, when refunds of overpaid interest under the revised Money Lending Business Act coincided with the Lehman shock and the limits of quantitative growth in the domestic card business became visible. Since then the company has chosen local lending itself, rather than a merchant network, as its source of revenue abroad, widening into a global business that includes Kisetsu Saison Finance, established in India in June 2018.
Competition
From Marui, which came out of the same instalment department store trade, the road divided over distance from a corporate group. Marui placed large stores densely along the Chuo Line and moved its source of earnings from retailing to finance with a card of its own, while Midoriya became the core company of the retail-affiliated card business under Seibu. Saison, though, did not stay inside that group either: in August 2004 it kept its alliance with Mizuho short of any capital involvement and declined the approach to make it a consolidated subsidiary. With the bank-backed Sumitomo Mitsui Card, JCB and Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS ahead of it on membership, belonging to no one’s capital is what created the conditions for stacking up co-branded cards with department stores and electronics chains drawn from any number of different groups.

Timeline

1951–1987From Midoriya, the instalment department store, to a retail-affiliated card company

  1. 1951Okamoto Torajiro founds Midoriya, an instalment department store, in Tokyo
  2. 1963Listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  3. 1968Designated to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  4. 1970Seibu Joho Center (today Saison Technology) established
  5. 1976Capital tie-up with Seibu Department Stores; taken into the Saison group
  6. 1979Midoriya Finance (later Atrium) established
  7. 1980Renamed Seibu Credit; merged with Shizawa Co.
  8. 1981Relaunched as the Saison group’s core credit and finance company
  9. 1982Seibu Card issued; Saison Counters rolled out nationwide
  10. 1984Seibu Teito Shoken (today Saison Fundex) enters property-secured lending

1988–2013Global brands on the card, and leading the industry’s consolidation through UC

  1. 1988Saison VISA and MasterCard international cards issued
  2. 1989Renamed Credit Saison
  3. 1991Enters the affinity (co-branded) card business
  4. 1995Saison JCB international card issued
  5. 1997Saison American Express card issued — all four global brands in hand
  6. 2003Takes a stake in Idemitsu Credit
  7. 2004Takes stakes in Takashimaya Credit and Resona Card
  8. 2005Takes a stake in UC Card
  9. 2006Absorbs UC Card (the UC membership business company); Saison Asset Management set up
  10. 2009Consolidated net loss of ¥55.5bn for the year to March
  11. 2010Seven CS Card Service established with Seven & i Holdings

2014–2022Shifting the centre of gravity to overseas lending and an economic zone of its own

  1. 2014Credit Saison Asia Pacific (today Saison International) established in Singapore
  2. 2015Stake taken in HD Finance, Vietnam; Indonesian JV PT. Saison Modern Finance launched
  3. 2018Kisetsu Saison Finance (India) — Credit Saison India — established as an NBFC
  4. 2019Rinno Hiroshi moves to chairman and CEO; Yamashita Masahiro becomes COO
  5. 2019Saison Capital established in Singapore for fintech venture investment
  6. 2020Qubitous Co. absorbed, tidying up the domestic card operating companies
  7. 2021Mizuno Katsumi becomes president and COO; Saison Investment Management launched
  8. 2022Moves to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in April
  9. 2022Saison Partners established as parent of Saison Debt Collection
  10. 2022Saison Crypto established in Singapore; Saison Omni India set up in November

Founding Story

1951–1987From Midoriya, the instalment department store, to a retail-affiliated card company

Credit Saison began as a shop, not as a lender: Midoriya sold appliances and furniture on monthly instalments, taking the repayments over its own counters, and grew from sales of $9.9M (¥4bn) in 1960 to $218.7M (¥65bn) in 1975 before the format ran out of road. Pulled into the Seibu retail group in 1976 and renamed Seibu Credit in 1980, the company kept the one thing the instalment store had taught it — how to judge a customer’s credit face to face — and rebuilt the whole business around it.

The instalment department store, where retailing and consumer finance were one trade

In May 1951 Okamoto Torajiro (岡本虎二郎) founded Midoriya Co., an instalment department store, in Tokyo[1][2]. The instalment department store was the format that underpinned the spread of consumer durables in post-war Japan, selling appliances, furniture and clothing on monthly terms; Marui, Maruko (丸興), Midoriya and King Shokai all built branches across the country. The customer took the goods away under a note or an instalment contract and paid the monthly instalment back at the shop — a trade in which retailing and consumer finance were a single business. In 1963 Okamoto explained a customer base made up mainly of people around thirty and younger by saying that the company had grown as far as it had because it had been raised by the customers who criticised it[3]. Midoriya listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in July 1963[4] and was designated to the First Section in June 1968[5], expanding as one of the carriers of the consumer-credit business through the high-growth years. In September 1970 it established Seibu Joho Center — today Saison Technology — bringing card processing systems in house[6].

By the middle of the 1970s the instalment department store as a format was close to its ceiling, squeezed by the rise of shopping centres and general merchandise stores. In 1973 Okamoto observed that Sangenjaya had merely gained more cars while everybody went to Shibuya[7], describing the shift in where station-front retailing worked and placing site selection and store strategy at the heart of the company. In March 1976 Midoriya entered a capital tie-up with Seibu Department Stores and was taken into the Saison group[8]. Where Marui turned itself from an instalment department store into a credit card company on its own, Midoriya took a different route: it became the core credit and finance company of the Seibu Saison retail group led by Tsutsumi Seiji (堤清二). In November 1979 it set up Midoriya Finance (later Atrium), the source of what would become the property finance business[9]. The outline of a company that had begun as an instalment department store and was becoming the financial core of the Saison retail group was now visible.

Instant issue over the counter: the Saison Counter overturns an industry convention

In August 1980 Midoriya changed its name to Seibu Credit and merged with Shizawa Co. at the same time[10]. With the instalment-store sign taken down, and a fresh start in June 1981 as the core credit and finance company of the Saison group, the company’s main battleground moved from instalment selling to credit cards[11]. In August 1982 it began issuing the Seibu Card — today’s Saison Card[12] — and rolled out nationwide a model in which the card was issued on the spot at Saison Counters sited inside Saison retail group stores such as Seibu Department Stores, PARCO, LIBRO and Loft. At the time, card recruitment normally meant screening by post and issue by post, with several weeks between application and the card reaching the applicant’s hands; the house cards issued by department stores and retailers generally worked the same way.

The Saison Counter overturned that convention. Screening the applicant on the spot at a site attached to a station or a store and issuing the card immediately was an unusual method in the industry, and it worked as a mechanism for widening the membership base of a retail-affiliated card in a short space of time. A route that carried shoppers at Saison group stores such as Seibu Department Stores and PARCO straight on into card membership took hold, and in February 1984 the company established Seibu Teito Shoken — today Saison Fundex — entering the property-secured loan business as well[13]. In the space of a few years, a company that had started as an instalment department store had built for itself a distinctive position as a card company embedded in retailing. It had stepped out of the retail-affiliated role of simply handing out house cards, and the outline of a new kind of card company — one whose weapons were issuing speed and the route through the shop floor — was fixed here.

1988–2013Global brands on the card, and leading the industry’s consolidation through UC

In the quarter-century after 1988 the company stopped being a house-card operator and became a general-purpose issuer, adding VISA, MasterCard, JCB and American Express until it was the only card company in Japan carrying all four, and then buying its way through the industry’s reshuffle — taking stakes in oil, department-store, bank and regional issuers before absorbing Mizuho’s UC Card outright in 2006. The reversal, a retail-affiliated company swallowing a bank-backed one, lifted volume to the top of the second tier; the bill arrived in 2009.

Widening out to VISA, MasterCard and American Express

In July 1988 the company began issuing the Saison VISA and MasterCard international cards, converting itself from a retail-affiliated house card into a general-purpose card carrying a global brand. Carrying a global brand meant an extension into payment settings not confined to use inside Seibu Department Stores, making the card usable at VISA and MasterCard merchants in Japan and abroad. In October 1989 it changed its name to Credit Saison, putting forward the name of an independent card company rather than the image of a subsidiary of the Seibu retail group. In January 1991 it began the affinity card business, turning the issue of cards bearing a partner’s brand into a line of business. The strategy was not to win volume under its own brand but to borrow the brand strength and membership base of a partner in order to raise the number of cards issued.

With the Saison JCB card in June 1995 and the Saison American Express card in October 1997, Credit Saison became the only card company in Japan handling all four major global brands — VISA, MasterCard, JCB and American Express — in house. The tie-up with American Express endured as the foundation of the later premium strategy, widening the product line into the Diamond, Platinum and Business American Express cards and running straight through to the premium-member acquisition strategy of the 2020s. The groundwork for a strategy of capturing a higher-spending customer segment, rather than playing the volume game of counting cards issued, was being assembled from the brand line-up side. Where the bank-backed issuers leaned on their own credit screening and group accounts and gave priority to volume growth, Credit Saison moved instead towards widening the variation of brands and designing products for each customer segment.

A retail-affiliated issuer absorbs the bank-backed UC Card

Between 2003 and 2006 Credit Saison stood at the centre of the reshuffle of the Japanese card industry. It took stakes in quick succession in Idemitsu Credit in October 2003, Takashimaya Credit — today Takashimaya Financial Partners — in April 2004, Resona Card in August 2004 and UC Card in March 2005, and in January 2006 it absorbed UC Card (the UC membership business company) outright. UC Card was a bank-backed issuer within the Mizuho Financial Group, and a combination in which the retail-affiliated Credit Saison was the absorbing party signalled how fluid the structure of the industry had become. In October 2006 it established Shizugin Saison Card and in November Daiwa House Financial, building an alliance-type business model in which card operations were run jointly with a varied set of partners — regional financial institutions, retailers, oil companies and property groups.

In June 2006 it set up Saison Asset Management, widening the point of contact with the customer from cards into investment. Consolidated operating revenue rose from $2.4B (¥275bn) in the year to March 2006 to $3.3B (¥346bn) in the year to March 2008, and consolidated ordinary profit reached a record level of $680.1M (¥80bn) in the year to March 2007. Credit Saison occupied a distinctive position within the domestic second tier that followed the bank-backed majors — Sumitomo Mitsui Card, JCB and Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS — built around retailing and an alliance of partners. Where the bank-backed issuers grew membership by leaning on customer bases they already owned, building scale through joint operation with a varied set of partners drawn from retailing, oil and regional finance marked the company out from its peers. The absorption of UC Card lifted the volume of cards issued a further notch, and the period is best read as the one in which the company secured the upper reaches of the second tier as an alliance-type domestic card company.

The ¥55.5bn net loss of the year to March 2009

The end of the expansion arrived abruptly. The 2006 revision of the Money Lending Business Act made the grey-zone rate — the band between the Capital Subscription Law ceiling and the Interest Rate Restriction Act — effectively prohibited, and claims for the refund of overpaid interest already collected in the past came in one after another. While the major consumer finance companies — Takefuji, Acom, Promise and Aiful — were setting aside large provisions for those refunds, Credit Saison, carrying cash-advance balances on its credit cards, was exposed to the same pressure for repayment. At the same time the Lehman shock struck in the autumn of 2008, and slowing card spending together with an increase in bad-debt provisions hit the accounts directly. The consolidated net loss for the year to March 2009 was $593.4M (¥56bn), and ordinary profit fell 46.7 per cent year on year to $331.4M (¥31bn).

The loss was the largest in Credit Saison’s history as a listed company, and across the Saison group as a whole, Seiyu and Sogo had already been through debt forgiveness and business failure. From then on the company set out from the premise that profit growth in the domestic card business alone had reached its limit, and changed course towards a strategy that sought a way through in adjacent businesses and overseas. The establishment of Seven CS Card Service in September 2010 to run a co-branded card business with Seven & i Holdings belongs on the same line. Where the bank-backed majors looked for survival through group reorganisation and consolidation, the choice the retail-affiliated Credit Saison made was not volume growth at home but diversification across both business lines and geographies.

2014–2022Shifting the centre of gravity to overseas lending and an economic zone of its own

From 2014 the company put its weight behind a business Japanese card issuers had rarely attempted: lending directly, in local currency, to consumers in Asia and Latin America, with a Singapore holding company at the centre and an Indian non-bank finance company as its main engine. At home it declined to fight the points war being waged by Rakuten, PayPay and NTT Docomo, and consolidated revenue moved from $2.3B (¥299bn) in the year to March 2022 towards a three-pillar structure — global, payment and finance — that it began to state openly to investors.

Overseas expansion, beginning from the Singapore base

In May 2014 Credit Saison established Credit Saison Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd. — today Saison International Pte. Ltd. — in Singapore. This was not merely an overseas representative office but took on the character of an operating holding company bundling together the overseas businesses in ASEAN, India and Latin America. When Japanese card companies moved abroad, they generally went no further than signing up local merchants and issuing cards to Japanese business travellers; what Credit Saison chose instead was direct entry into unsecured lending and consumer finance for local consumers. In May 2015 it took a stake in HD Finance in Vietnam — today HD SAISON Finance — establishing a footing in an ASEAN consumer finance business built on motorcycle loans, consumer-durable loans and cash loans, and in September of the same year it launched the Indonesian joint venture PT. Saison Modern Finance. Departing from the standard playbook of the Japanese card industry, the policy that overseas the source of revenue would be lending itself was settled here.

These were not extensions of a domestic card business but entries into local-currency lending in its own right. In June 2018 the establishment of Kisetsu Saison Finance (India) Pvt. Ltd. — Credit Saison India — created the core base of an overseas lending business that would later grow into the main driver of consolidated business profit. Running four products in parallel as an Indian NBFC (non-banking financial company) — wholesale, partnership, embedded and branch — was a direct-lending model with few precedents among Japanese card companies. The point that separated this judgement from other Japanese issuers was that instead of pursuing an overseas merchant network as an extension of the domestic card business, the company took a local NBFC licence and lent on its own book.

Stepping out of the points war: the own-economic-zone line under Rinno

Rinno Hiroshi (林野宏) served as president of Credit Saison for a long stretch from the late 1990s, before stepping across to representative director, chairman and CEO in March 2019 and entrusting the COO role to Yamashita Masahiro (山下昌宏) and then, in March 2021, to Mizuno Katsumi (水野克己). In an interview in September 2024 Rinno set out an evolution into a company strong in global business and in digital transformation, and stated a policy of not joining the points competition but building an economic zone of its own — an explicit break with the points-economy contest led by Rakuten Card, PayPay Card and Docomo’s d Card. The domestic card market, in which members were fought over on points return rates, had entered something close to saturation in the second half of the 2010s, and the Rakuten, PayPay and Docomo economic zones had come to enclose the settings in which cards were used. Credit Saison did not join that quantitative competition, taking instead a strategy of building an economic zone of its own through loose co-operation with partner companies.

In June 2019 it established Saison Capital Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, turning venture capital investment in fintech into a line of business, and in September 2021 it launched Saison Investment Management Pte. Ltd. Working from the premise that the domestic card business was a low-growth one, it diversified in three directions: overseas lending centred on India, fintech venture capital investment, and domestic finance businesses. In April 2020 it absorbed Qubitous Co., tidying up the domestic card operating companies in parallel. The shape of a strategy that declined to fight on volume in a mature market and directed capital and people towards overseas and adjacent fields was settled around this time. Against Rakuten Card running first in Japan on cards issued and PayPay Card stacking up members in the mobile payment economic zone, Credit Saison chose to stand one step back from the competition over card numbers.

The three-business portfolio takes shape through the pandemic

In the pandemic year to March 2021, Credit Saison’s consolidated net revenue fell 9.2 per cent year on year to $2.6B (¥283bn), then recovered to $2.3B (¥299bn) in the year to March 2022, $2.3B (¥323bn) in the year to March 2023 and $2.4B (¥362bn) in the year to March 2024. Domestic card transaction volume came back temporarily as economic activity resumed, but the low-growth tendency of a mature industry continued. Growth in the receivables balance of the Indian business, and the accumulation of property finance and guarantee balances through Saison Fundex, underpinned profit; and after the move to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in April 2022, the group set out its three-business structure — global, payment and finance — explicitly in its earnings presentation material as well. The premise that profit is hard to make from domestic cards alone was now something it was prepared to show in its external disclosure.

In November 2022 Credit Saison India established Saison Omni India Pvt. Ltd. inside India, launching new products such as embedded finance one after another. In September 2022 Saison International Pte. Ltd. established Saison Crypto Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, bringing the company into the crypto-asset field as well, and entries into Brazil (February 2023) and Mexico (March 2023) followed in quick succession. In August 2022 it established Saison Partners Co. as the wholly owning parent of Saison Debt Collection, reorganising the domestic receivables management and servicing functions too. This was the period in which the geographical reach of the overseas business widened from ASEAN and India to South America, and the company moved into a stage of running the three-business portfolio — global, payment and finance — as separate concerns. A business structure centred on non-bank overseas lending, with few precedents among Japanese card companies, had come into view.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  2. マネービル (Money Building, July 1963)↩
  3. マネービル (Money Building, July 1963)↩
  4. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  5. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  6. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  7. 経営コンサルタント (Keiei Consultant, September 1973)↩
  8. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  9. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  10. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  11. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  12. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  13. Credit Saison, securities report for the 75th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Yomiuri Shimbun: “Instalment selling revives”, 13 October 1949; and the 1957 coverage of the instalment department stores.
  2. Nikkei Business (Nikkei-McGraw-Hill / Nikkei BP), 24 May 1976: on the family circumstances behind Midoriya’s entry into the Seibu retail group.
  3. 1987, the feature on the Seibu retail group.

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