banking

SMBC's Olive exceeds 5m customers in two years since launch

Norbert Gehrke

Norbert Gehrke

— 3 min read
SMBC's Olive exceeds 5m customers in two years since launch

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Sumitomo Mitsui Card Company announced that the number of accounts opened for "Olive," a comprehensive financial service for individual customers, has surpassed 5 million.

Olive is a completely new service that seamlessly combines bank accounts, card payments, financing, online securities, online insurance, and other functions on an app, making it a cutting-edge financial service. It was launched in March 2023 and is billed as the "NEW STANDARD."

In the two years since the service began, Olive has been working with top players in various industries beyond the SMBC Group. In addition to these business partnerships, Olive has been continuously updating its functionality, including the "Fixed Amount Automatic Deposit Service," which allows automatic deposits from accounts at other banks to an Olive account, and the "Payment Mode Addition Service," which allows customers to add up to five credit cards.

In addition, the new Olive LOUNGE, which combines a bank, cafe and office, has three branches in Tokyo, and is scheduled to open in Osaka in April.

Main Product Highlights

2023

  • March: Olive service starts
  • August: Capital and business alliance agreement concluded with Lifenet Life Insurance Group
  • September: Account number exceeds 1 million
  • October: "2023 Good Design Award" received

2024

  • February: Account number exceeds 2 million
  • March: "Fixed Amount Automatic Deposit Service" "Olive Account Rank Switching Function" "Family Card Issuance" Starts
  • April: Olive's conventional points "Green 'V Points'" to "Blue and Yellow 'V Points'"
  • May: Olive LOUNGE Shibuya Opens
    "Payment Mode Additional Service" starts
  • June: Won the Grand Prize in the Japan DX Award 2024 CX category
  • July: Strategic business alliance agreed with online travel company HTS
    Account number exceeds 3 million
  • October: Olive LOUNGE Shimotakaido Opens
  • December: Joint venture established by Money Forward and Sumitomo Mitsui Card, household account book/asset management app
    New function "Household account book that earns points" is provided in "Money Forward ME"

2025

  • March: Olive LOUNGE Koenji Opens
    SBI Securities' financial instruments brokerage account exceeds 1 million accounts
  • April: Olive LOUNGE Semba Opening Scheduled

Since the launch of Olive services, about half of the customers who have opened new accounts are people in their 20s or younger. In addition, when looking at the number of new accounts opened by age group and comparing the number opened during the same period before and after Olive's launch, there has been a notable increase of 211% in those in their 40s and 222% in those in their 50s.

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