2026.11.10
TOKYO, November 10, 2026 – Vesca Co., Ltd. (“Vesca“) and Akuru, Inc. (“Akuru”) today announced that they have begun exploring a collaboration to develop a payment solution that uses transaction history from both physical stores and e-commerce to improve fraud detection and deliver a smoother checkout experience. Vesca provides the Ark multi-payment platform and the Seeds payment and marketing platform, while Akuru offers ASUKA, a fraud prevention solution for credit card and other payments.
The partnership will bring together Vesca’s platform for Card Present (CP) and Card Not Present (CNP) payments and membership ID management, built on its experience in physical stores, and Akuru’s expertise in online fraud prevention and approval rate optimization. Together, the companies aim to reduce fraud while making payments easier for legitimate customers, both in-store and online.
Consumers increasingly move between physical stores, e-commerce sites and apps when they shop. Retailers are increasingly focused on omnichannel commerce, which aims to create a seamless shopping experience across physical and digital channels.
Payment is the final step of every purchase and has a major impact on the overall omnichannel experience. Online fraud, however, has continued even after EMV 3-D Secure authentication became mandatory in Japan at the end of March 2025. According to the Japan Consumer Credit Association, losses from stolen credit card numbers totaled approximately ¥47.5 billion*1 in 2025, a level that remains high.
Businesses need stronger fraud prevention, yet stronger controls often cost them revenue. Extra authentication steps lead to checkout abandonment, and legitimate transactions are declined as suspected fraud. Account takeover is also rising. Fraudsters use accounts taken over through phishing and other methods, so their transactions look like those of genuine customers and are hard to detect by reviewing each transaction on its own. In addition, customer and payment data are often kept separately for stores and e-commerce. In many cases, a customer who shops regularly in one channel is treated as a first-time customer in the other, because their history is not available there. For retailers pursuing omnichannel commerce, the challenge is to strengthen payment security without making checkout more difficult for customers.
Vesca: A payment and membership platform connecting physical stores and online channels
Vesca offers Ark, a multi-payment platform that supports card payments in both CP and CNP environments, as well as electronic money, QR Code payments and more, and Seeds, a payment and marketing platform that provides membership ID management, closed-loop prepaid and loyalty points. As the company leading the rollout of Verifone products in Japan, Vesca has extensive experience integrating with POS vendors and a strong track record in CP payments, mainly with enterprise merchants. Vesca can also link membership IDs from physical stores, e-commerce sites, apps, LINE and other channels with payment information and manage them in one place, so businesses can recognize the same customer across channels.
Akuru: Fraud prevention expertise supporting more than 45,000 merchant sites
Through ASUKA, its fraud detection and authentication system, Akuru operates one of Japan’s largest fraud detection networks, protecting payments for more than 45,000 card merchant sites in Japan and overseas. Because ASUKA analyzes transaction data across a wide range of industries, including retail, travel and services, it can detect early signs of fraud that a single site would struggle to spot.
Fraud tactics have become more diverse, from account takeover through phishing to attacks that bypass identity authentication. Akuru provides end-to-end protection from account registration and login through to payment, covering account takeover prevention, payment fraud prevention, 3-D Secure optimization and approval rate optimization. By adjusting the level of screening and authentication to the risk of each transaction, Akuru achieve both security and sales growth.
Omnichannel commerce connects in-store and online shopping. This means a customer’s history and trustworthiness in one channel can inform fraud screening and authentication in the other. The two companies aim to build a system that uses each customer’s payment ID to combine in-store and online transaction history and verify whether the customer is genuine. A customer’s in-store history can confirm that their online purchases are legitimate. In the other direction, their online history can help verify their identity when they pay in store with an ID-based method, such as an app. Customers who can be verified from their history will see as few additional authentication steps as possible, while suspicious transactions will be reliably challenged. The goal is to stop fraud and give legitimate customers a smoother checkout.
Vesca’s experience in physical-store payments and membership management, combined with Akuru’s fraud prevention expertise, will allow the companies to assess fraud risks using data from both in-store and online transactions. The companies are exploring an end-to-end service covering account registration, payments, and fraud analysis, with a focus on the three areas:
1. Preventing impersonation and fake accounts at account registration and login
2. Detecting fraud at checkout while increasing approval rates for legitimate customers by sharing in-store and online transaction history
3. Visualizing approval rates and fraud prevention results across CP and CNP payment data, through an integrated dashboard covering both
The two companies have already begun technical validation for implementation. The companies will continue testing and developing the proposed solution, targeting a launch in spring 2027. The service is intended to help retailers improve payment security and provide smoother checkout experience across stores and e-commerce.
Details of specific initiatives will be announced once they are finalized.
Makoto Yoshida, CEO, Vesca Co., Ltd.
“Customers who regularly shop in a store are often treated as first-time customers when they shop online, and vice versa. This partnership is about closing that gap. By combining Vesca’s in-store payment capabilities with Akuru’s expertise in online fraud prevention, we aim to reduce fraud without adding unnecessary steps for legitimate customers.”
Osamu Kondo, President and CEO, Akuru, Inc.
“For years, payment data and customer experience have remained disconnected between physical stores and e-commerce. For customers, it is all the same shopping, yet payment security and the effort required have been judged by different standards in each channel. Having begun discussions with Vesca, whose strengths include in-store payments and membership platforms, we will work to break down this wall and create an experience in which customers can pay safely and smoothly, whether the payment is Card Present or Card Not Present. By working with Vesca, we hope to make payments safer and easier for customers across both online and physical stores.”
Vesca develops and operates merchant payment systems, provides prepaid and loyalty point services, and offers membership management and marketing support using customer ID data. Its solutions include the Vesca Ark multi-payment platform and the Vesca Seeds payment and marketing platform.
Headquarters: 6F Kowa Hiroo Building, 5-2-32 Minami-Azabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
CEO: Makoto Yoshida
More at https://www.vesca.co.jp/
Akuru operates ASUKA, a one-stop service that gives e-commerce businesses the tools they need to maximize revenue. ASUKA provides comprehensive security, including protection against card number generation and card testing attacks, attribute and behavior analysis and checks against known fraudulent shipping addresses to stop third-party fraud, account takeover prevention and protection for mobile wallet payments. It also offers an advanced form of 3-D Secure authentication designed to protect sales. ASUKA is used by more than 45,000 card merchant sites across retail e-commerce, travel and services. Akuru also provides chargeback guarantee and customer acquisition support services.
More about ASUKA (in Japanese): https://akuru-inc.com/service/asuka/
Headquarters: TDS Mita Building 6F, 2-7-13 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
President and CEO: Osamu Kondo
More at https://akuru-inc.com/
Vesca Co., Ltd. – Public Relations
Tel: +81-3-5422-9211
Email: marcom@vesca.co.jp
