Korean fintech giants are buying their way into Japan's investing boom

The real story behind the acquisition

Mirae Asset Group and Toss aren’t just buying seats in Tokyo—they’re buying time. Starting a securities business in Japan from scratch means navigating regulatory approval, building trading infrastructure, and recruiting a client base, a process that takes years. Acquiring an existing brokerage compresses all of that into months. That speed matters right now because two structural shifts are happening simultaneously in Japan: global capital is flooding in, and Japanese retail investors are finally moving money out of bank accounts.

Foreign investors bought 11 trillion yen ($66 billion) worth of Japanese stocks in the first half of 2024 alone, a record that signals a fundamental repricing of the country’s equity markets. Meanwhile, Japan’s redesigned NISA program—the government’s push to get savers into stocks and funds—has unlocked personal wealth that sat idle in savings accounts for decades after the lost decades of stagnation. The window to capture this retail surge is narrow. Mirae Asset and Toss understand that, which is why each is circling three or four Japanese brokerage targets as it weighs deals.

Two different weapons, same battlefield

The interesting split is what each company brings to Japan. Mirae Asset is leading with asset management. Its GlobalX ETF franchise has already made a mark: the GlobalX NASDAQ 100 Daily Covered Call, listed in Japan last April, crossed 50 billion yen in assets under management within four months. That kind of velocity is unusual for a foreign ETF in a market that has historically favored domestic products. But GlobalX has the product and needs the distribution. A Japanese brokerage acquisition gives Mirae Asset a ready-made sales channel—a network of account managers and online platforms—to push its funds directly to the millions of new NISA investors.

Toss, by contrast, is betting on experience. It has spent years refining a mobile-first trading app in Korea that strips away the complexity of traditional brokerage interfaces. The plan is to transplant that model to Japan, where the incumbent brokers—old-line firms with clunky systems and intimidating menus—remain dominant precisely because they have decades of client relationships. Toss’s Japanese subsidiary, TS Information & Technology Japan, launched in November last year, is already building out the platform architecture. The acquisition would provide the license and the customer list; the app would provide the reason those customers stay.

Why this matters beyond East Asia

For English-language readers, the headline grab is simply “Korean companies buy Japanese brokers.” But the deeper story is about what kind of globalization this represents. Korean financial firms have expanded overseas before, but the pattern was narrow: corporate banking relationships, Korean equity brokerage for expats and institutions, and local joint ventures like the one Mirae Asset formed with Daiwa Securities Group in 2019. This time is different. Both companies are exporting a model that succeeded in Korea—digital-first retail brokerage for Mirae Asset’s ETF channel, app-driven convenience for Toss—and planting it directly in a market where the incumbents are structurally behind on user experience.

The implication is not just about two companies chasing deals. It’s about a template. If Mirae Asset and Toss can replicate their Korean growth trajectories in Japan, other Korean fintechs and financial platforms will have a proven playbook for entering large, digitally lagging markets in Southeast Asia and beyond. The Korean financial sector spent years winning at home through mobile-first innovation; now it is looking outward with that capability as its primary export.

The regulatory trap door

There is a reason the source article flags the Mumu Securities case. The Chinese-owned broker acquired Hibiki Securities in 2022 and grew fast using aggressive marketing and simple interfaces—proof that a fintech model works in Japan. But it also got hit by regulators when it mislabeled US ETFs and ETNs that were excluded from NISA eligibility, selling them to investors who assumed they qualified for the tax break. The Financial Services Commission handed down an administrative sanction in June 2024. The lesson is blunt: speed and simplicity are competitive advantages in Japan, but so is compliance. A foreign buyer that cannot match Japanese standards for product vetting, internal controls, and investor protection will face the same regulatory reckoning.

Japanese securities regulators have long been rigorous about exactly these areas. They scrutinize product suitability, disclosure accuracy, and the systems that underpin order execution. An acquiring firm will need to rebuild or retrofit its compliance infrastructure to meet Japanese requirements—not bolt them on afterward. The companies that ignore this will repeat Mumu’s mistake. Those that get it right will have a durable advantage.

What happens next

Mirae Asset is expected to narrow its target list next month, according to the source. Toss is further along in its operational setup in Japan but likely still early in deal discussions. Neither company has announced a firm target yet. When they do, the market will watch closely for three signals: the scale of the target’s customer base and deposit holdings, the quality of its existing product lineup, and whether the acquisition price reflects the strategic value of speed rather than just the book value of assets.

For the Japanese market, the effect will be incremental but real. Traditional brokers will feel pressure to improve their digital offerings or risk losing the youngest cohort of NISA investors to platforms that do not require a branch visit or a phone call to open an account. For Korean fintech, Japan is the test case. Success here proves that a Korean digital brokerage model can compete in a mature Asian market with its own sophisticated players. Failure—or a regulatory stumble—will give the rest of the region pause.

The broader context is what makes this moment distinct. Japan is exiting deflation. Nominal growth is returning. Asset prices are rising. Personal wealth is moving from savings into markets. The question is who captures that flow. Mirae Asset and Toss are betting that the answer is no longer just the incumbents who have sat on those relationships for thirty years.