In August of 2024, Mercari inaugurated direct crossborder transactions, making its listings in Japan available to users in Taiwan. Behind the curtain of this development was the work of a special team for crossborder (XB) transactions, and the lightning speed with which our organization adjusted to the laws and ordinances of other countries.

More recently, on May 7, 2025, we launched direct crossborder transactions in Hong Kong. This makes a step forward in our efforts to bring the fun of using Mercari to the wider world.

In this edition of Mercan, we take a peek behind the scenes to discover where we struggled and what our focus point was. For insights on these topics, we sat down with XB Risk & Legal Team manager Mai Suenaga (@mai), her teammate and legal support provider Chiungyi Shao (@shao), and Privacy Office members Kie Hotokezaka (@Kie) and Yurie Kim (@yuri), who were both involved in XB.

—To start off, I’d like each of you to tell me about the areas that your team covers.

@mai:We created XB Legal as a new team in June 2024. XB existed as a project even before that, and during that time, I handled the legal work for XB as a member of the HD Legal Team. However, the company then decided on a plan to ramp up our focus on XB like never before. That’s how I was approached to become the dedicated person in charge of the business’s legal matters.

In the beginning, I was the entire team, but in August of last year @shao joined the company and brought her Taiwan legal credentials with her. Following that, another new member joined us in May of this year, so there are currently three of us.

@Kie:The Privacy Office was established in 2021. Before the release of XB in Taiwan, most of the team’s work focused exclusively on compliance with Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information.

At the time, there was no one on the team who was well-versed in the laws and regulations surrounding the protection of personal information overseas, and so up until the Taiwan release, I had relied on the services of an external lawyer. Starting in August of last year, @yuri joined our team to work on XB; she has experience working in personal information protection law overseas.

—I’d like to change gears now and ask you about the XB project. So August 29, 2024, arrived and you released the project, but when did you actually break ground? What sorts of processes did you plan and implement? How were the other teams involved?

Expansion to Taiwan with Crossborder Transactions (available only in Japanese)

@mai:　I first joined this project sometime around February 2024. Up until then, Mercari’s crossborder business had been operated through partnerships with proxy purchasing businesses. Our partners would provide Mercari item listings to users overseas through third-party e-commerce websites operating as proxy purchasing services. However, this project was a completely new initiative. It embedded the purchasing proxy’s services within Mercari’s website, which affords our users overseas a seamless shopping experience.

As a result, we felt it was necessary to organize and consider certain matters to a deeper level than ever before. This included such things as defining and separating the roles and legal responsibilities between Mercari and the proxy purchasing business, looking at the methods for retaining data, and performing risk analysis. This is where a variety of administrative teams, including the Privacy Office, Accounting, Intellectual Property, and Public Policy, came together for regular meetings and compiled a list of pertinent discussion points and risks.

—What’s one thing that has happened since the launch of the project that has left a lasting impression on you? 

@mai:　For this service there are transactions processed within Mercari Japan and others that cross over to other countries, like Taiwan. We also have services provided by Mercari and services provided by proxy purchasing businesses. This is why it was necessary to identify which services are involved and which country’s law applies. It’s no simple task.

We also engaged external lawyers to research laws and ordinances, but because our costs also started to pile up, we had a hard time narrowing down the important points to move forward with. Moreover, foreign laws weren’t the only concern. Since we were dealing with a different culture and business customs, it was hard to actually estimate risk points that we identified in our research results.

For example, there are products that are sold as regular products in Japan. However, in some countries, the same products can be seen as politically sensitive or offensive to national sentiments. Mercari’s crossborder business has to look at how to handle such products.

@Kie:　That’s right. Being uncertain as to the extent to which we should research a given topic is a concern we also have with privacy protection. As for the decision about which country to launch in, there were also policy changes made according to the status of our business, so there was a need for us as the second line to make timely decisions about what we were going to do going forward. In particular, when we first started the project, we had a meeting with our Product-side colleagues about what they wanted to do and compiled their ideas. There were also a lot of instances where we split the time for the preliminary handling and organization of ideas prior to confirming the discussion points.

—It sounds like you faced completely different problems compared to our business in Japan, where we have a more intuitive understanding of these things. I understand that @yuri and @shao joined in the thick of things. How did the two of you feel about this project?

@yuri:　I had experience working on global expansion at my previous company, but the scale and speed of this project was incredible. By the time I joined in the fun, the research into privacy-related laws and ordinances was already complete for the most part. A list of the legal requirements that could become blockers had already been created but needed a further deep dive.

Out of this entire initiative, what became the biggest issue was finding a good balance between compliance and the UX of the product.

@Shao:　That’s true. The XB service that we were trying to create had no precedent anywhere, neither in Japan nor overseas. With few examples to follow, we were working while searching for a way forward and looking at the feasibility of implementing our ideas. In the midst of this, the content of the product and project changed daily, and the research that Legal had to work on evolved accordingly. Personally, I think I’m the kind of person who’s used to rapidly changing environments. However, I was initially surprised by the speed at which we worked. Since we needed to make progress at a pace that matched the pace of the changes, we forged ahead with our work, redefining policies on a weekly basis.

—How did you manage to resolve the issues facing you amidst such changes?

@Kie:　From the midpoint of the project onward, we had narrowed down the discussion points, and then we received word that the company had decided to kick off with a release in Taiwan. From there, it became clear what we should do. Moreover, the product manager in charge was adept at handling the project, which I think made our work easy.

@mai:　As far as our research was concerned, we relied on the expertise of outside lawyers for help, but when it came down to the actual direction of the service, the specifications of the product, and the policy for risk-taking, these were things that ultimately had to be decided internally. We had open discussions with the teams related to the project, which included not just Legal but of course Privacy, Public Policy, Trust and Safety (TnS), and other teams as well. At our regular weekly meetings we would go over our direction again and again before we eventually decided on a policy.

—It sounds to me like there was a demand for you to work fast, and there were situations where you felt the weight of responsibility, but was there anything about the process that was particularly fun for you? Did anything happen that motivated you?

@mai:　Well, prior to the release, I went on a business trip to Taiwan where I took part in user interviews, and I heard first-hand from users in Taiwan who were purchasing products from what they called “the Japanese company Mercari.” They spoke about how much they liked Japanese anime, figurines, and related products and how they therefore felt that the items sold on our platform were excellent. Hearing the passion in their voices left an impression on me, and I was filled with a strong desire for these users to enjoy our products and benefit from more convenience.

@Kie:　What made me feel motivated was seeing Mercari’s first overseas release happen seamlessly. To date we have launched our services overseas through the Group company Mercari US. However, this project was the first international launch of the Japanese version of Mercari, allowing users overseas to create accounts and be provided services by the company directly.

There were a lot of discussion points that we had to take care of by the release date, and honestly there were times when I questioned whether we really had to consider some of the more intricate points that we did. However, after the release, whenever one of the events that we had imagined could occur actually cropped up, I feel that our preparations really paid off.

Furthermore, I would like to see a quick resolution to any areas where our pre-release considerations were insufficient. Mercari’s overseas expansion is still just getting started, but I think we’ve managed to cross the threshold of going from 0 to 1, so I think our further expansion will be smoother going forward, and we will be able to launch our services to even more countries.

@yuri:　For me, the moments when I feel motivated are when we overcome obstacles to resolve an issue together as a team. By communicating with a wide range of teams, we were able to deepen our understanding about the areas that each team was working on. Similarly, I also feel that the teams we were working with came to understand the privacy policies that we were striving to create.

@Shao:　Personally, nothing makes me happier than when an event that we supported as the Legal Team takes place without a hitch. The Crossborder Legal Team is positioned as an integral part of the business, and so we know what the business division is trying to accomplish from the planning stage. We are also able to monitor the situation all the way up until the final release, which rewards us with a great sense of accomplishment.

—I get the impression that the team has become much stronger professionally. What points would you like to focus on going forward?

@Kie:　As we were researching and making preparations regarding our privacy policy, with the idea of providing services to various countries, our workload felt really heavy. However, we were able to get a sense of the tone of the regulations for each country. Looking back on our work, I feel that the preparations we made were useful in the end.

Policies change regularly, and so it’s still necessary for us to be able to respond to changes flexibly. Going forward, I would like us to standardize our research and risk assessments regarding laws and ordinances where possible, turning them into shared knowledge internally.

@yuri:　I would like to create a solid privacy-first image of our company so that our users in Japan as well as overseas can feel secure about our handling of their personal information when they use Mercari.

@Shao:　This mostly stems from the high expectations I have for myself, but because the members of our business divisions have such diverse nationalities and professional backgrounds, I would like to provide legal support that is in line with individual needs. I don’t want people to think of Legal as a roadblock to doing business but rather as a partner for coming up with ideas for resolving issues together.

@mai:　Going forward, the XB Team has plans to launch in several countries other than Taiwan and Hong Kong. In addition, we are considering various projects that are not limited to the structures we’ve already released. Therefore, people demand very timely support from the Legal Team. From one project to the next, there are always new developments, and so based on the learnings we acquired by working on the Taiwan and Hong Kong projects, I think it’s necessary for us to quickly broaden the range of topics that we cover as the Legal Team.

@Kie:　In the future, I plan to be in charge of the privacy policy for our fintech business. In this article, we mostly talked about the crossborder business, but at Mercari we have a variety of other business areas. Rather than remaining fixed on just one, I would like to take on the challenge of working in a wide range of fields.

Photography: Wataru Suzuki