Digital Garage, Kakaku.com, and Toshiba Tec Sign LOI to Promote DX in the Food Service, and Retail Industries

Digital Garage, Inc. (TSE Prime section: 4819; HQ: Tokyo; Representative Director, President Executive Officer and Group CEO: Kaoru Hayashi; DG), DG group company Kakaku.com, Inc. (TSE Prime section: 2731; HQ: Tokyo; Representative Director, President and Executive Officer: Shonosuke Hata; Kakaku.com) and Toshiba Tec Corporation (TSE Prime section: 6588; HQ: Tokyo; President and CEO: Hironobu Nishikori; Toshiba Tec) sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) to provide strategic support for Kakaku.com’s “Tabelog Order.”

In recent years, the food service and restaurant industry has faced significant changes in the business environment. Consumers are changing as their purchasing attitudes and needs are diversifying. Furthermore, with the global outbreak of COVID-19 infections, lifestyles are becoming more established with the latest digital technologies, integrating real and cyber services and purchase behavior. On the other hand, while making full use of the customer information and sales record obtained from POS (Point of Sales) system, making investments in POS surrounding areas is crucial for the retail business in response to the demand to incorporate consumer needs and behavior, changes in the business environment such as COVID-19 infection countermeasures, and a variety of the latest service applications satisfying diversified operation, organization and process (E-Commerce, mobile, attendance, payroll, ordering, inventory, and data analysis). The “IT Introduction Subsidy 2022” promoted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) is an administrative measure to solve the situation that food service operators are facing. The agreement between the three companies is an effort from the private sector to provide Japan’s leading optimal solution for the food service industry.

DG Financial Technology, Inc. (HQ: Tokyo; Representative Director, President, Co-COO: Hiroshi Shino; DGFT), a subsidiary of DG, has been providing a variety of payment methods for more than 20 years under a highly available and secure system infrastructure and operating system. DGFT has grown to become one of Japan’s leading Payment Service Providers, with an annual transaction volume of approximately 3.6 trillion yen, 720 million payment transactions, and over 700,000 member stores in the last fiscal year.

Kakaku.com operates one of Japan’s most extensive restaurant search and reservation sites, “Tabelog,” with approximately 830,000 stores listed and 87.63 million monthly users. In addition, the in-store mobile ordering service “Tabelog Order” will provide customers with a more comfortable dining experience and improve operational efficiency at restaurants. The service has been selected as a project to be subsidized by the “IT Introduction Subsidy 2022,” which aims to promote DX.

Toshiba Tec has been focusing on developing data solutions based on the global retail platform “ELERA” while making maximum use of its solid customer base as a leading POS system company with the world’s No. 1 market share.

The three companies will collaborate their strengths and accumulated know-how to support DX promotion in the food, beverage, and retail industries and contribute to the development of a sustainable society.

【About DG】
Digital Garage’s corporate purpose is “Designing “New Context” for a sustainable society with technology.” Digital Garage operates a payment business that provides one of the largest comprehensive payment platforms in Japan, a marketing business that leverages data to deliver solutions that integrate real and cyberspace, and an investment and development business that discovers and supports promising startups from around the world.

【About Kakaku.com】
Based on its mission “LIFE with – To Become a part of people’s daily lives –“ Kakaku.com, Inc. operates a wide range of user-oriented internet services, such as the shopping support site Kakaku.com, the restaurant discovery and reservation site Tabelog or the comprehensive search site for job classifieds Kyujin Box, all of which seek to enrich people’s daily lives.

【About Toshiba Tec】
Toshiba Tec Corporation supports workstyle reform in various workplaces, such as retail industries and offices, by keeping with customer centric approach on a global scale under its corporate philosophy – “Create with You” – Keeping our customers in mind all the time and everywhere -. The world is now faced with social issues, like waste loss, increase in carbon dioxide, labor shortage and workstyle reform. The Toshiba Tec Group aims to become “A global top solutions partner” through co-creation of new values and solutions to resolve social issues with its customers and partners while leveraging its globally developed sales and service networks.

SUPPLEMENT: DG’s Future Perspective

■Details of Toshiba Tec and Kakaku.com’s “Tabelog Order” effort
The system to be developed is based on the functions created through the Proof of Concept of “Pangaea Delivery,” which centrally manages multiple online ordering services such as food delivery, with the cooperation of Toshiba Tec and JCB. Connecting DGFT’s payment platform, which integrates 75 payment methods, to “Tabelog Order” allow to provide an optimized solution that supports a variety of payment methods to meet consumer needs and utilize data on each restaurant.

■DG’s role in the LOI
DG will develop a set of tools (SDK) that can easily and inexpensively connect a variety of peripheral services for retailers and restaurants to POS systems. The SDK will be provided to developers of external applications (E-Commerce, attendance, salary, purchasing, analysis) in cooperation with Toshiba Tec. As a first step, it will be supplied to connect “Tabelog Order” and the POS system. In addition to connecting to a variety of external applications, plans are to expand into the food service industry as well as other sectors such as healthcare, travel, retail, transportation, and more.

■DG’s aims in the LOI
Based on the capital and business alliance agreement between DG and Toshiba Tec signed last December, “Hybrid Pay” (OMO for the food service industry) will be launched by connecting the payment service “VeriTrans4G” and Toshiba Tec’s POS system. Various peripheral services will be expanded to evolve into a universal service of OMO (a hybrid of real and cyber services) representing Japan.

■DG’s future perspective
New era is about to begin in which it will be possible to predict the future using a thinking model similar to the human, utilizing next-generation of AI (statistical computing) based on data analysis, one of the major next-generation themes in DG’s R&D Lab, by combining payment data, store data, communication data, statistical data, and others. The DG Group, with DGFT as its core payment processing business, will co-create next-generation DX businesses with strategic partners in various sectors, including food service, healthcare, travel, retail, and transportation, thereby supporting Japan’s DX and contributing to the development of a sustainable society.