Rakuten Auction to Launch Anonymous Auctions for PCs and Mobile Phones

Rakuten Auction to Launch Anonymous Auctions for PCs and Mobile Phones

Rakuten, Inc., a leading Japanese e-commerce company, and NTT DoCoMo, Inc., Japan’s largest mobile operator, announced that their joint-venture company Rakuten Auction, Inc. is launching an auction service that does not require sellers or winning bidders to divulge private information to one another. The service will be available to PC users from today and will be listed in the i-mode™ portal from November 20.

Compatible handsets for the new service, dubbed “Rakuten Auction,” will be FOMA™ models sold since the launch of the 900i series (with some exceptions). As part of the service, a social networking site linked to the auction site will enable “Rakuten Auction” users to communicate with others who share a common interest in auctions.

Rakuten Auction will handle deliveries and payments without requiring auction participants to reveal user information, and will provide easy guidance to using the system, taking part in auctions and viewing details of transactions. “Rakuten Auction”, the first customer-to-customer trading service in the i-mode portal, will be available to approximately 22 million Rakuten members (as of the end of June) and about 29 million i-mode users with compatible FOMA handsets (as of the end of October).

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