Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (President & CEO: Yasuhiro Sato) and Money Forward, Inc. (CEO: Yousuke Tsuji) have signed a business cooperation agreement with the aim to provide convenient and easy to use financial services such as payments services not tied to corporate or personal banking. Additionally, Mizuho FinTech fund1, a private equity vehicle owned by Mizuho Bank, Ltd. (President & CEO: Nobuhide Hayashi), a member of the Mizuho Financial Group and Mizuho Capital Co., Ltd (President: Hajime Saito) underwrote new Money Forward shares in a fresh round of financing.

Mizuho Bank and Money Forward have previously provided automated invoicing and receivables reconciliation support, and automated payroll support services to corporate customers.

This round of financing and business cooperation agreement will see the two companies eye possible collaboration across a wide range of business areas in addition to their currently corporate customer focused accounting support services. These include collaboration in household bookkeeping management services to increase convenience for individual customers, jointly holding seminars focused on improving financial knowledge of consumers, sponsorship of events, and connecting systems through service API2 sharing initiatives.

Looking forward, Mizuho will proactively utilize technologies and solutions of FinTech firms to continue to provide highly convenient services to both corporate and personal customers.

1.The Mizuho FinTech fund is a private equity fund operated by Mizuho Capital that was set up with the aim of investing in startups with superior financial technologies.
2.API is short for application programming interface. This is the routines, protocols, and tools needed to link a system to an external service. A company can allow external vendors access to the functions of their services through providing an API, and enables the vendor to create platforms that allow a greater number of customers to access the services of that company more easily.