Akihabara News (Japan) — Flea market app Mercari now records over 20 million monthly active users on a sustained basis, a mark which it first cracked last September.
Other divisions of the listed firm which once held the title of Japan’s first unicorn are also hitting their highest-ever user numbers. The mobile payment and credit business Merpay now boasts nearly 13 million users, and even the struggling US branch of Mercari now records monthly active user numbers close to 6 million people.
On the other hand, in its latest financial report, the Japanese firm notes that not everything has been smooth sailing.
While it is still growing, the rate of growth has slowed in terms of the number of listings and frequency of purchases. The company attributes this slowdown in part to the fact that people’s fears of the Covid pandemic have been receding, and so they are becoming more prone to leave their homes and to physically go out shopping.
The company also notes that early 2022 has witnessed an increase in fraudulent usage across the industry.
A major recent initiative has been the Mercari Shops, an e-commerce platform allowing anyone to establish their own online shop using just a smartphone. Any business operator, whether an individual or a corporation, can open Mercari Shops.
Fully launched last October, the company reports that there are already more than 200,000 such shops.
However, despite its record numbers of users, new services, and highest-ever revenues, Mercari also reported that it operated at a financial loss in the July 2021-March 2022 period, recording a net loss attributable to owners of the parent company of ¥7.7 billion (US$60 million) over that nine-month period.
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