The survival rate of stores handling local currency was found to be 18 percentage points higher than that of stores not handling local currency.
BC Card announced on the 1st that this result came from analyzing payment data for 263 types of local currency it operates in 81 regions nationwide from 2023 to 2024.
According to the analysis of the survival rate by store type conducted by BC Card, 77% of stores handling local currency survived by the end of 2024, while the survival rate of stores not handling local currency was at 59% by the end of 2024.
Last year, sales and the number of customers for local currency nationwide increased by 9% and 20%, respectively, compared to the previous year. This is in contrast to a 4% decrease in total sales and a 1% decrease in customers for BC Card during the same period in these 81 regions.
The industry with the highest use of local currency was restaurants (36.9%), followed by supermarkets (17.6%), hospitals (11.5%), cram schools (7.4%), and convenience stores (5.8%).