PayPay, the SoftBank and Yahoo Japan-backed payments app, opened 19% above its $16 offer price on its Nasdaq debut, valuing the company at $12.7 billion after raising roughly $880 million through a sale of about 55 million American Depositary Shares priced below the marketed $17-$20 range. Founded in 2018, PayPay has grown to 72 million registered users and $100 billion in gross merchandise volume by waiving transaction fees for small merchants in its early years, and has since expanded into credit, banking, securities, and insurance with ambitions to become an all-in-one digital finance platform. The listing is the first US IPO of a SoftBank majority investment since Arm's 2023 debut, and comes a month after PayPay announced a Visa partnership to support US expansion.
