Introducing the Professionals series, where we delve into the lives of standout professionals within the PayPay Group. This time, we sit down with Taichi Asamizu, Head of Management Planning Department 2, Corporate Strategy Division, Corporate Strategy Group, to discuss the roles and remarkable initiatives of the business planning department at PayPay, as well as what he values most in his work.
Head of Management Planning Department 2, Corporate Strategy Division, Corporate Strategy Group.
After graduating from university, he joined a major comprehensive consulting firm as a new graduate. He was involved in end-to-end support services ranging from strategy formulation and mid-term planning to execution support. After working in corporate planning at a mail-order company, he joined PayPay in July 2021. Currently, he focuses on FP&A tasks such as KPI and profit-and-loss planning, budget management, and data analysis for the payments, merchant, and financial businesses.
A Corporate Strategist Bridging the Frontline and Leadership
Could you share your career journey and what led you to join PayPay?
Eager to explore a wide range of industries and business models, I joined a consulting firm as a new graduate and tackled a multitude of management challenges. While I grew tremendously by supporting clients’ management, I eventually developed a desire to drive business as an insider, which led to my decision to take on the challenge at a business company.
I chose PayPay because it was a place where I felt I could leverage my past experiences, expand the business alongside outstanding leaders, and act as their strategist. I also had a personal fondness for PayPay, being a user myself. As a business planner, I could engage closely with management steerage. Driven by the ambition to make a significant impact with the venture spirit and swift pace of PayPay, I joined the company in July 2021.
What are the mission and functions of the Management Planning Department?
The purpose of the Management Planning Department is to oversee the entire company, bridging the frontline with the management while supporting strategic decision-making. In a company like PayPay, which is growing at a phenomenal speed, each department and service is in a constant state of evolution. For management to make informed decisions, it is essential to accurately assess the business landscape across the board, though this scope is challenging for busy executives to manage daily.
Here, the Management Planning Department becomes the eyes of the management. Assigned members meticulously scrutinize the entire organizational activities, determining whether any off-track occurrences are temporary or fundamental. By analyzing these findings, we anticipate future business outcomes and provide crucial information that aids in improving decision-making accuracy and speed, especially if there’s a potential risk of missing targets.
Analyzing trends of low-spending users and contributing to accurate business assessment
Is there any initiative that particularly stands out?
The initiative of segmenting users based on registration period was particularly memorable. In 2023, analyzing user growth became pivotal in evaluating the current business and formulating the next growth strategy. The crux was to determine which analytical perspective would best offer an accurate evaluation of user status.
After various trial-and-error processes, we discovered that user behavior significantly differed based on when they registered with PayPay. While veteran users since launch exhibited high monthly payment amounts, new users registered between 2022–2023 were still maturing. Additionally, 2023 showed a surge in these new users, altering the overall trend.
Furthermore, across all registration segments, the average spend grew over 10% year-on-year without deceleration. It turned out that even top contributors began with small transactional amounts. Their per capita monthly transaction amounts have duly increased, affirming a healthy growth trajectory—a gratifying insight to accurate business evaluations.
What is essential in Management Planning Department duties?
I place great importance on using numbers to tell the story, from evaluating the significance of issues to gauging measures’ effectiveness. To foster substantive discussions, subjective bias and ambiguity should be minimal—thinking based on quantitative data is fundamental. Analysis is only as good as its communication, hence I am meticulous about how numbers are presented, and how materials are crafted, always bearing the reader’s perspective in mind.
Please explain the exhilaration factor in your work.
I am greatly thankful that PayPay’s management team remains approachable and engages with us in flat discussions. My opinions are sought beyond mere reporting of management issues, enabling me to feel that if we offer valuable insights, we can drive the company forward—a source of professional gratification.
Occasionally, discussions become intense, and we face critical feedback such as “Is this a makeshift solution?” or “Have we considered external stakeholders’ viewpoints?” Despite this, the shared aspiration to improve the company persists, and when our proposals are accepted, there’s a tangible sense of making a difference in management.
Fostering Organizational Growth and Contributing to the Financial Shift by Aligning Perspectives with Management
What’s the atmosphere like within the Management Planning Department?
Within the Management Planning Department, we focus on identifying and gathering company-wide issues. Professionals who maintain antennas to capture internal and external information gather here, treating every matter as their own concern. With PayPay’s rapidly evolving business dynamics, extensive effort goes into data collection, analysis, and visualization. However, even amidst challenging situations, we pride ourselves on being an organization that’s not afraid to delve deeply to drive business growth.
What do you emphasize for the growth of your team members?
I encourage members to align their perspectives with management whenever possible. Simply stating “we couldn’t validate due to a lack of data” doesn’t propel matters forward. They should consider how they could act within their reach and put in maximum effort. Even if tentative, by suggesting “given this assumption, results could be as follows,” the debate can advance if not entirely off-track. Of course, thorough verification is necessary later on, but to think like management, it’s vital to have a mindset geared towards moving discussions forward.
Could you share your future outlook or vision?
The immediate objective is to contribute to the “establishment of a financial platform,” an immense business challenge. Unlike the payments business, which has eyed “cash” as its competitor, inciting market expansion, numerous rival companies aim to penetrate the financial infrastructure sector, making it challenging to disrupt existing networks amid rapidly changing macroeconomic environments such as financial policies.
The Management Planning Department intends to contribute to accelerating business growth, always being alert to diverse information, building hypotheses quickly for verification, and keeping discussions progressing, even before data sufficiently accumulates.
A message to our readers
The pace of business at PayPay is unparalleled, consistently delivering unprecedented, innovative services. Our Management Planning Department often navigates complex analytical terrains without precedent, where methods and approaches conceived just three months ago may already be obsolete. At PayPay, merely following established precedent is not enough; individuals with a mindset for driving change themselves and a willingness to tackle unprecedented challenges are indispensable. Those who relish change and have the resolve to push forward will undoubtedly thrive at PayPay.
Current job openings
*Job openings and employee affiliations are current as of the time of the interview.