In brief: Line raising $1.3b for payments and other fintech services

Via Reuters:

Japan’s Line is raising around US$1.33 billion through convertible bonds to fund its aggressive expansion in the financial services business.

The company said it plans to spend the bulk of the money on promotion of “Line Pay” and other new financial services by end-2021.

Line Pay lets users send money to each other using the popular chat app and pay offline at stores.

This week, Line launched its own cryptocurrency called Link. Users can earn the digital coin as a reward and use it to avail of services within the Line ecosystem.

The Japanese firm says its messaging app has 164 million monthly active users.