Crowd Cast

Crowd Cast, Ltd. is a Japanese financial technology company established in January 2011 with a focus on providing corporate cashless solutions. The company was founded by its current CEO, Takashi Hoshikawa, while he was attending business school for his MBA. Hoshikawa's background includes engineering roles at DEC and Microsoft, where he was involved in launching new support businesses for corporate clients and mobile development, eventually overseeing a SQL server development department.

The firm's core business revolves around its main service, "Staple," which is an expense management service integrated with a corporate prepaid card. This service aims to address the challenges of traditional corporate expense reimbursement by offering a cashless and paperless system. The target market consists of corporate clients, particularly small to medium-sized businesses in Japan, where the adoption of corporate cards has been relatively low compared to other countries. The business model is subscription-based, where clients pay for access to the platform and its associated services, with potential for tiered pricing based on usage. Crowd Cast generates revenue by providing this B2B cashless payment solution.

The "Staple" service combines a corporate prepaid card with an expense tracking and reporting application. When an employee makes a payment with the "Staple Card," the data is automatically reflected in the expense management system, significantly reducing manual data entry and paperwork. The platform is designed to integrate with various accounting software for seamless financial operations. A key feature is the ability to issue corporate prepaid cards, which helps companies that may face credit-related hurdles with traditional corporate cards. The company also offers its card-issuing mechanism as a white-label package service called "Card as a Service (CaaS)".

Crowd Cast has secured multiple rounds of funding to advance its corporate cashless business. This includes a Series C round and strategic investments from entities like J-Rays Investment Limited Partnership, a CVC fund involving The Joyo Bank, Ltd. These funds are intended to fuel the development of new business ventures and enhance existing services. The company has formed business alliances with major corporations such as NTT Communications.

Keywords: corporate cashless solutions, expense management, financial technology, B2B SaaS, prepaid corporate cards, expense reporting, Staple, Card as a Service, CaaS, payment management, Fintech Japan, Takashi Hoshikawa, expense automation, corporate payments, business expense management, cashless society, digital transformation, spend management, corporate finance solutions, business financial services