Coda and Digital Garage have announced a strategic partnership aimed at boosting revenue for game publishers through innovative out-of-app monetization approaches.

Digital Garage has launched global services for "AppPay," Japan's No. 1 off-app billing platform that the company has been providing since 2023. This service provides Merchant of Record (MoR) functionality, where Digital Garage acts as the legal sales entity on behalf of game and app operators in countries around the world. It offers one-stop services for complex and diverse operations including legal compliance for sales in each country/region, payment processing, tax filing, and refund management, enabling global off-app billing payments. ## About the "AppPay" Global Service Domestic game and app operators can reduce the burden of contract procedures with overseas payment operators and foreign exchange operations through domestic transactions with Digital Garage. In addition to MoR functionality, they can use services such as multilingual and multicultural site construction, user support, marketing, and data analysis in Japanese, allowing them to focus on core operations such as development and management. "AppPay" has already been implemented in over 40 game titles domestically, contributing to diversification of payment channels and revenue optimization. Going forward, Digital Garage will expand the deployment of this service, starting with implementation at two major game companies, contributing to revenue expansion not only domestically in Japan but also globally. Similarly, by providing MoR functionality to overseas game and app operators, the company will also expand its handling of off-app billing payments in Japan. Digital Garage will continue to evolve "AppPay" into a globally compatible platform, contributing to the global business expansion of game and app operators as well as various digital content businesses. The Digital Garage Group has established the group strategy "DG FinTech Shift," which integrates payments, data, and technology to contribute to the business growth of a wide range of operators amid major changes in society and industrial structure. This business is part of that group strategy initiative. ## What is a MoR (Merchant of Record)? This is a mechanism that takes on the legal sales responsibility for selling digital content such as in-game items on behalf of operators. Through this, the MoR becomes the sales entity to users in each country, handling compliance with e-commerce and consumer protection laws in each country, supporting different payment methods by country, and calculating and filing consumption taxes and VAT (value-added tax) for each country, thereby handling the complex operations associated with overseas expansion. ## AppPay Service Overview "AppPay" is Japan's first online shopping mall service that provides "payment system," "web pages (CMS generation)," "customer support," and "marketing" functions, enabling the purchase of digital content from multiple apps outside of apps. Through this service, app operators can easily build off-app billing payment mechanisms without the trouble and cost of web page production or system development, and can significantly reduce the burden of payment fees. Users can utilize multiple payment methods including credit cards just by registering with "AppPay," making it easy to make billing payments for various apps. The payment system of "AppPay" adopts payment services provided by DG Financial Technology, a group company. With robust, stable, and high-speed infrastructure handling over 7.5 trillion yen in payment transactions, it supports "DG FinTech Shift" while accelerating innovation in the smartphone industry. * * * Digital Garage fully launches “AppPay,” the first service for third-party payment in JapanDigital Garage (DG) has started full-scale operation of “AppPay,” the first online marketplace service in Japan that allows users to…Japan FinTech ObserverNorbert Gehrke

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