Heesung Lee (@lee), Vice President of Growth (Fintech) since July 2024, joined Mercari Group in 2019 out of a desire to use internet technology to make the world a better place. Now, in charge of growth for Mercari Group’s financial businesses Merpay and Mercoin, he aims to create a service known and loved throughout Japan and used by millions of people. From his first encounter with the internet, through his time working at Recruit, and now working at Mercari, @lee has been fascinated with the potential of technology. How does he view building trust in financial services? And how does he work to expand Mercari’s fintech services in response to the needs of its users? We sat down with @lee to discuss Mercari Group’s vision for the future of fintech.

A choice made based on belief in the potential of the internet

—First, I’d like to hear about how you got to where you are now. How did you start off your career?

@lee: My career started in 2014, when I graduated from a computer science-focused graduate school and joined Recruit. I chose Recruit because I had a strong interest in using internet technology to make the world a better place.

—2014 was right around the time when internet technology was showing more and more potential, wasn’t it? What was going through your mind when you chose Recruit?

@lee: Of all the internet-related companies at the time, companies in the social networking game industry stood out to me as being particularly successful. I liked games, but I wasn’t all that interested in making them myself—I thought that the internet had much greater potential, and that it could even significantly change the structure of society. 

Heesung Lee

—The potential to change society… And that’s why you chose Recruit?

@lee: Yes, that’s right. I had studied computer science in graduate school, and I was looking for a place where I could make the most use of my skills to have a large impact on society. Recruit gave me a lot of freedom, even as a newcomer, which was great.

──What kind of work did you do there?

@lee: At the time, I was interested in research-related positions, like UX research. I had put a lot of effort into my research in graduate school, so it felt like a natural path to go down. But when I actually started at Recruit, I was assigned to a backend engineering position. I wasn’t all that confident in my coding abilities, so I was a little nervous. (laughs)

—That’s a pretty surprising twist! What did you do?

@lee: My first project was creating an international version of an educational service. I was the first—and only—engineer on the project team, which was just getting off the ground. 

I handled a wide range of tasks, from database design to making the service available to an international audience and implementing video streaming. I had experience creating a web service before, so I had some sense of how it all worked. But there were many more things to take into consideration for a service that would be used overseas, and I had a pretty tough time creating the video streaming system.

—How did you build your career from there?

@lee: The service I was working on ended up being shut down, and the company gave me a few options. One of them was to move into a product manager position, which is what led to my current career.

From there, I worked on another educational support app, and then in my last three or four years at Recruit, I was involved in a dating app project. This was another completely new business for Recruit, which I participated in as a product manager. It was a small team, so I was involved in creating the business plan, writing specs, handling customer support, coming up with marketing initiatives—basically, anything you can think of, I probably did it.

I feel like this experience really trained my ability to overlook an entire business. Rather than working on improving just one feature as part of a large team, I would be explaining profit and loss statements to execs one day and working out the fine details of features we would provide to our users the next. I learned a lot from having to cover such a wide range of areas. 

—I see. Were there any projects at Recruit that left a particularly strong impression on you?

@lee: I’d say that the dating app project left a pretty strong impression. It wasn’t just about building a dating app; it made me think about the social significance of dating apps as well. The business that formed the core of the dating app, Zexy, is a product providing information and services regarding weddings, mainly aimed at brides-to-be, but as you probably know, Japan’s marriage rate is on a downward trend. When I was working on this project, we were in a phase where we had to rethink Zexy’s core concept. We eventually came to the conclusion that we needed to not only increase the number of couples getting married, but increase our reach so that more people can meet a prospective partner in the first place.

—So you were thinking about how to solve the social issue of low marriage rates as well?

@lee: Exactly. We also thought about the public’s perception of dating apps, too. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to use internet technology to change the world, and from that perspective, it was a very interesting project. Meeting a prospective partner is part of the core human experience. I thought it was really interesting to provide new possibilities for such an important aspect of life using internet technology. 

—When you put it that way, it really does have the potential to change the concept of dating and marriage. You’ve mentioned your interest in internet technology a number of times. What drew you to the internet in the first place?

@lee: My first encounter with the internet was when I was in elementary school. We got a Windows 98 computer, and one of my parents drew a family portrait using MS Paint. I thought that was so cool.

Looking back on it, that portrait was such a minor thing, but it led me to become completely absorbed in the world of the internet. I started out by making my own simple website, and gradually began interacting with other people online. When I thought about how there were actual people behind the words I was reading on my screen, I knew that this technology would change society.

—And that experience led to your current career.

@lee: It did. I think what was most memorable was becoming part of a new community through the internet. Before, all I knew was home and school, so the internet unlocked a whole new world. I made friends with kids around my age, even as far as Hokkaido, in chat rooms. I had friends at school, of course, but the internet enabled me to meet people with the same interests as me all over the country. I was drawn to how welcoming an environment it was.

—These days, it’s become so normalized that it’s hard to imagine anything else, but at the time, I can see how it was a new and exciting experience.

Drawn to the concept of a seamless society created by building trust

—After your experiences at Recruit, you joined Merpay in 2019. At the time, the Merpay service hadn’t yet been released. What drew you to Merpay?

@lee: You’re right; when I started interviewing with Merpay, the company didn’t have a product yet. Plus, everything was kept under wraps—there was practically no information available to people outside of the company.

Despite that, I applied because of Merpay’s mission of building trust for a seamless society. As someone with the dream of using the internet to change the world, I was immediately drawn to this mission. I was also captivated by the fact that Mercari, which had just had a successful IPO, was seriously taking on finance as a new business.

—I see. Can you go into more detail about what drew you to Merpay’s mission?

@lee: Let’s take the problem of trust on the internet. The internet doesn’t trust us, does it?

—What do you mean, the internet doesn’t trust us?

@lee: For example, we have to log in to verify our identity every time we use a service, right? That’s basically the internet asking us, “Are you really who you say you are?” In real life, your friends don’t ask you to verify yourself every time you meet.

It’s so normalized that we don’t realize it, but we’re actually paying a huge cost by not being trusted—society as a whole pays an enormous cost for trust. Is this really sustainable a hundred years down the line?

—That’s a really interesting point. And Merpay’s mission is working to address this problem?

@lee: Exactly. If we can build the same kind of trust that we have offline in the digital world, we can practically eliminate friction and conflict. By doing so, we can create a seamless society. I was impressed by how well thought-out the mission was.

Plenty of companies tout goals of changing finance or the structure of society, but I don’t think there are many companies out there that put the concept of trust at the core of their business. I think that’s what makes Merpay and Mercari Group unique. 

—From that perspective, Merpay’s mission really is unique, isn’t it? So, what did you work on after joining Merpay?

@lee: My first project was working on growth for Merpay Smart Payments. At the time, QR code payment was just starting to see a boom in popularity. I wanted to help make Merpay bigger as a payment business, but even more than that, I also wanted to provide a brand-new form of value to society.

By that, I mean using Mercari’s unique approach to credit to assess people and provide them with trust. Conventionally, credit is determined based on characteristics such as where someone works or how many assets they have. This system is supposedly assessing an individual, but it actually only looks at someone’s “tags.” These tags don’t tell someone’s whole story, so there are many people out there that slip through the cracks due to various circumstances even though they’re actually trustworthy as an individual.

—And you want to provide opportunities to people who are overlooked by these conventional systems.

@lee: Yes, I do. By changing the way you assess people, you can see just how many people out there are trustworthy but have slipped through the cracks up until now. Providing those people with trust is a business opportunity, but not just that—it creates value by enabling them to do things they couldn’t before.

—Has there been anything in your work at Mercari so far that left a particularly big impression on you?

@lee: I’d say there are two projects that stand out in my mind the most. The first is Merpay Smart Payments; specifically, fixed-amount payment. This is a payment method in which we collect fees from users, so when we first considered offering the service, there was a lot of debate within the company.

Our true goal was to give users more freedom in their payments, and to avoid causing any users to suffer as a result. We especially put effort into making repayments easy. Normally, businesses make more money by encouraging their users to choose payment methods that delay repayment as much as possible. But we did the opposite and insisted on a UX that made repayment as easy as possible.

—Sounds like you really thought about it from the user perspective.

@lee: Yes, we did. We thought that making repayment easy would draw more users to the service, which would grow the business as a result. To us, what was most important was for the core concept of the product to allow easy repayments, rather than just making it look easy. Once we had that in place, we made sure to carry out promotions and marketing initiatives that were in line with that concept.

The other project that left an impression on me was Mercard. When you look at Mercard, you may think it’s just like any other of the countless credit cards out there. That’s why we really thought hard about what a Mercari Group credit card would look like and why we wanted to release one.

—Does Mercard have any features unique to Mercari Group?

@lee: It does. We wanted to create a card that would serve as a step on our way to achieving Merpay’s mission of building trust for a seamless society. By nature, credit cards create trust in the form of credit, but we provide a variety of payment methods in order to evolve that even further. In addition to the card itself, we also offer barcode payments, iD payments, and more. Everything can be done right within the Mercari app—all on your smartphone.

Another unique point about Mercard is that you can pay it off using your Mercari sales balance. In Japan, not many people have forms of income other than their salary. But by using Mercari, you can sell items you no longer need to earn extra money, and use that money to pay for things, without even having to withdraw it first. I think this is a pretty ground-breaking system.

—So basically, the cycle of earning money and spending money can all be done within one ecosystem.

@lee: Right. The biggest hurdle people face when paying for things is not having enough cash on hand. The Mercari marketplace already supported cash inflow (earning money); now, Mercard expands the possibilities for cash outflow (spending money). Having this existing support for cash inflow gives us more freedom for cash outflow, too.

—In other words, Mercari and Merpay working closely together gives users more convenient and seamless ways to manage and use their money.

@lee: Exactly. We had a really hard time balancing creating something in line with our value proposition and achieving our lofty goals. But that just goes to show how valuable this project was.

Looking at the users behind the numbers

—You’ve talked about your experiences in your career so far. What is your role now?

@lee: Right now, my main role is to help deliver Mercari Group’s financial business to our users. In particular, I focus on the growth aspect.

A typical growth organization can be evaluated using easy-to-understand quantitative metrics. Targets are numbers, and progress against those targets is also expressed in numbers. But what lies behind those numbers is people—our users.

For example, suppose we’re looking at a target of one million. This isn’t just a figurative number—one million people really means one person times one million. In business, many people just say “one million” and drop the units, but that’s leaving out a crucial factor, making it easy to forget what that number really represents. Our goal is to deliver value to each and every user, even as we work toward big numerical targets.

—So, growth that looks at the individuals behind the numbers.

@lee: Yes, exactly. And we build the organization necessary to make that happen. Specifically, this includes marketing teams, analytics teams, some product teams, and sales teams. At the moment, I don’t directly oversee teams that work on creating the product itself, but I work very closely with product teams.

I especially value the product-led growth approach. I think that the product is the one thing that will truly bring our business to new heights. Having an excellent product in our users’ hands is what really unleashes our potential. That can’t be done with promotions alone.

I believe that, when it comes to tech companies and manufacturers, employees in all positions should be invested in making the best product possible. On the other hand, most users don’t actually care about how the product is made. Instead, they’re interested in what value the product has for them and how that value makes their life better.

But the value the product has for users is not just created by the product division—it’s created through All for One efforts by the product division, marketing, PR, sales, and the management divisions that support them. In that sense, you could say that marketing, PR, and sales teams, as well as all of the teams that support them behind the scenes, are involved in the product together with the engineering teams. If these teams aren’t coordinating, you can’t create a product that will provide an experience valuable to the end user.

—Even teams that seem detached from the product are actually deeply involved in its creation.

@lee: Exactly. And that’s why we’re aiming for product-led growth. I plan to keep promoting our approach of growing the business led by the product, as much as it takes.

—It feels rather contradictory for the head of a division in charge of promotions and sales to emphasize product-led growth.

@lee: You’re right, it is. But emphasizing product-led growth doesn’t mean making light of other divisions. I use the phrase to mean that people in marketing and sales are right in the middle of the product, too. We aren’t selling physical items from some inventory. No matter where we go, the core of our business is our product. And I speak for all of Mercari Group when I say that.

A future born from a deep understanding of users and society

—What is your vision for Fintech in a few years?

@lee: First, I hope that the number of people who find true value in Merpay reaches tens of millions. I want Merpay to be a service known and loved throughout Japan. I believe that Mercoin also has the potential to reach a similar scale.

If we’re aiming to be a service loved throughout Japan, we can’t only focus on what’s best for us. We need to deepen our understanding of society as a whole to see what our users—and our future users—are looking for. In other words, we can’t just think about Merpay. Mercari Group as a whole needs to get better and better, and we need to constantly think about what value is offered to our users as Mercari grows into a service popular throughout the country.

Businesses tend to make choices based on internal circumstances and reasoning, but I believe that having an organization full of people who really understand the world and our users is what will enable us to make a service loved throughout Japan.

—To wrap things up, can you tell us about your philosophy and view on work?

@lee: The view that I value the most is that our work can only be done by delivering value to our users. As I mentioned before when talking about growth, our work seems like it’s all about numbers, but in reality it’s not about the numbers—it’s about our users. Our users just happen to be represented by numbers.

If we don’t keep that in mind, we may find ourselves in danger of just playing with numbers or putting out promotions that ignore the user experience. Our goal is to create and deliver services that enrich the lives of our users. The money we receive is an expression of gratitude for the value we provide. I think of this as the core of our business.

To reach this goal, we will continue to listen to the needs of our users and provide the best service possible.