Challenge

SmartNews launched in Japan in 2012 after its founders noticed Tokyo subway commuters struggle to read the news over spotty signals. They introduced Smart Mode, a core feature that downloads articles in the background, so app users can read offline without delays. The app surpassed one million downloads within its first year and has since grown into one of Japan's largest news apps.

For years, the company operated as a free, ad-supported app, partnering with more than 3,000 media outlets to distribute stories. That model relied on a single revenue stream. The company saw an opportunity to build a second revenue stream: a premium service that gives readers unlimited access to curated paid articles from more than 50 domestic and international outlets – plus, more than 300 premium coupons for restaurant chains, convenience stores and other retailers.

But expanding that subscription service required building an entirely new billing and payment system. Business and economics news isn't only consumed on phones during commutes; it's also often read on desktop during work hours. To reach those readers, SmartNews needed a web experience suited to longer reading sessions, as well as a way to handle sign-ups and billing on the web.

Solution

The engineering team building SmartNews＋ was new to Stripe, but they chose it for its developer-friendly APIs, thorough documentation, and fast path to a working development environment.

"We prioritised speed for this project. Even though we looked at other providers, the ability to access a development environment immediately and the extensive documentation made Stripe the obvious choice," said Taishi Takeichi, product lead at SmartNews.

SmartNews used Stripe Billing to launch its premium pricing model for SmartNews＋ without dedicated billing engineers. It used Stripe Checkout with the embedded payment element to create the web checkout flow, giving the team a prebuilt, secure payment UI instead of building one from scratch. The launch coincided with Japan's 3D Secure mandate, but Stripe's payment UI supported it as ready-to-use, with no additional work required. SmartNews enabled readers who were interested in SmartNews＋ to start with a free month before charging for ongoing access to premium articles and premium coupons. The company also simplified the checkout flow, reducing the steps between a reader's interest in SmartNews and completing payment. And to protect against revenue churn, SmartNews enabled Smart Retries, which uses AI to retry failed payments at the optimal time – recovering charges that would otherwise be lost.

SmartNews partnered with Stripe's professional services team for implementation guidance and expertise. The team helped the company navigate edge cases, answered ad hoc questions and provided tailored workshops to keep the launch on track.

SmartNews also implemented Stripe Sigma to run custom queries on its payment data, in addition to leveraging the Stripe Dashboard to monitor cohorts and track growth.

Results

SmartNews achieved 90% conversion and a 98.4% authorisation rate

After simplifying the registration UI and refining the checkout flow built on Checkout and its embedded payment element, SmartNews＋ increased conversion rates to approximately 90%. SmartNews now consistently achieves a 98.4% payment authorisation rate.

"We simplified the flow so that once a user decides to pay, nothing gets in the way. With Stripe Checkout, we didn't have to build the checkout experience from scratch. We focused on improving the flow and getting to market quickly," said Takeichi.

Stripe Billing recovered 69.6% of failed payments with Smart Retries

The Stripe environment was running within two to three weeks, and the full SmartNews＋ web experience went live 10 weeks after development began.

With Billing's Smart Retries, SmartNews now automatically recovers 69.6% of payments that would otherwise fail, retaining subscribers without requiring them to re-enter payment details.

A single payments integration can scale to new audiences

SmartNews originally identified a major opportunity for commuters in Japan, but SmartNews＋ reaches a different audience as well. The web version opened the service to business and economics readers, and embedding billing directly into the web gave the team full control over pricing and the checkout flow.

Having built on Stripe from the start, SmartNews can scale to new markets without rebuilding its payment stack.