Japanese banks’ activities in Asia since the 1980s, we see that they have steadily expanded credit provision and other business operations amid the growing sophistication of needs while Euro-Area banks have restrained their activities in the region, particularly since the global economic and financial crisis in 2007-2008. Above all, in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region, Japanese banks have actively pursued the acquisition of capital or business alliances with local banks since around 2012 in order to capture the increasingly sophisticated and diverse needs of the region.

As a result, in the field of financial services for retail and corporate customers, there have been spillovers of financial technology from Japanese banks to the local banks that they have acquired or with which they have formed alliances. In the retail sector in particular, financial techniques have been transferred from financially developed countries to financially underdeveloped countries through the international networks of local banks which Japanese banks have acquired or with which they have formed alliances.