Lawson Bank Brand Guidelines: Lawson ATMs, a 2018 Licence and Branches Named for Foods

Seventeen years of cash machines before a licence.

Lawson Bank grew out of the cash machines in Lawson’s convenience stores. In May 2001 Lawson set up Lawson ATM Networks, a joint ATM management company, its English corporate history says, and the Lawson ATM service began that October, according to Japanese Wikipedia. Lawson ATM Networks was owned by Lawson together with banks and partners; Japanese Wikipedia lists Mitsubishi Corporation, Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation among its shareholders in 2011, with IBM Japan running the systems and Secom handling security and cash transport. Without a banking licence of its own, though, it could only run machines on behalf of other banks.

In November 2016 Lawson established a preparatory company for a bank. On 26 March 2018 it announced that it would apply to Japan’s Financial Services Agency for a preliminary review, aiming to start banking within fiscal 2018 under the name “Lawson Bank,” The Mainichi reported the next day. The paper called it the first new entry into consumer banking since Daiwa Securities Group set up Daiwa Next Bank in 2011, and noted that Lawson would be the third retailer to found a bank, after IY Bank — now Seven & i’s Seven Bank — in 2001 and Aeon Bank in 2007. The new bank would replace the ATM business run by a Lawson subsidiary, across a network of some 14,000 stores.

The steps followed quickly, Japanese Wikipedia says. The bank took over the Lawson ATM business on 1 June 2018, became Lawson Bank, Inc. on 2 July and received its banking licence on 10 August 2018. It began banking on 15 October 2018; Lawson’s English history lists the launch of Lawson Bank under September 2018. Lawson owns 95 per cent of the bank and MUFG Bank holds 5 per cent, according to Japanese Wikipedia.

Onigiri, sushi and dessert branches.

Lawson Bank keeps its accounts simple. Japanese Wikipedia describes ordinary and time deposits opened through a smartphone app or a website, with identity documents uploaded as images; every account holder gets a cash card but no passbook, and day-to-day banking runs online. The cash card works only at Lawson Bank’s own ATMs, and the account cannot normally be used for direct debits, apart from the bank’s own credit card. Accounts can be linked to a Ponta ID, the loyalty points used at Lawson, so that transactions earn points. In January 2019 the bank added a credit card, Lawson Ponta Plus, a Mastercard combined with the Ponta card, with issuing handled by Mitsubishi UFJ NICOS, the same source says.

The most memorable detail is in the branch names. All of the bank’s branches are online, with no counters to visit, and the twelve that hold personal accounts are named after food sold in Lawson stores. A customer’s branch depends on their birth month: Omochi for January, Choco for February, Osushi for March, then Cafe, Onigiri, Salad, Ice, Fruit, Pasta, Obento and Soup, ending with Dessert in December, according to Japanese Wikipedia.

That name carries a long history. Lawson says its company name and its trademark of a white milk can on a blue background go back to 1939 in Ohio, where J. J. Lawson ran a dairy store, before the first Japanese Lawson opened in Osaka Prefecture in 1975. Lawson Bank shares that name, and the colours in this guide are only an interpretation of it.

Apps, ATMs and disclosure.

Japan’s internet and retail-group banks present themselves mostly through screens rather than branches. Sony Bank opened in 2001 with a service website, MONEYKit, instead of a branch network, and Rakuten Bank, which began in 2000 as eBANK Corporation, calls itself an internet-only bank. Their pages are organised around everyday tasks: deposits in yen and foreign currencies, card and home loans, investment trusts and, more and more, apps and account opening by smartphone.

Many carry the name of a larger consumer group. Rakuten Bank took its parent’s name in 2010, and Sony Bank belongs to Sony Financial Group. The banks set a Japanese name beside a Latin one — 楽天銀行 with Rakuten Bank, ソニー銀行 with Sony Bank — so the same name has to work in two scripts on cards, apps and statements.

Cash is still part of the picture, and it is reached through other companies’ machines. Rather than building large ATM networks of their own, these banks connect to machines in convenience stores and other banks: Rakuten Bank’s 2010 tie-ups with E-net and Lawson put its cards into FamilyMart, Ministop and Lawson stores, and Sony Bank’s history lists connections with Seven Bank, Lawson, E-net and Aeon Bank. Card faces have become a place for character illustration, as with Sony Bank’s PlayStation and PEANUTS designs.

Behind the consumer pages sits a more formal layer of disclosure sections, press releases and investor documents. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — who set it up, who owns it and when its name changed — and marks clearly what rests on the bank’s own word.

ATMs beyond the store.

ATMs remain the heart of the business. Japanese Wikipedia, citing the bank’s 2025 disclosure report, counts 13,889 Lawson Bank ATMs across all 47 prefectures at the end of March 2025, and AppBank put the number at more than 14,000 in March 2026, when NTT Docomo and Lawson Bank began allowing cash top-ups and withdrawals for the d-barai payment app at the machines, around the clock where the host store is open.

The machines are also moving outside Lawson’s own shops. In a release dated 26 December 2024, Lawson Bank said it had agreed with Juhachi-Shinwa Bank, a Nagasaki bank in the Fukuoka Financial Group, to replace one of that bank’s ATMs at Isahaya General Hospital with a new-model Lawson Bank ATM around March 2025. The release said the new model accepts cards issued overseas, tops up QR-code payment apps with cash and, through NFC, tops up contactless transport cards; it expected about 260 machines outside Lawson stores by the end of 2024. Japanese Wikipedia lists supermarkets such as Belc, San-A and Seiyu, Sogo & Seibu department stores and JA farm-co-operative sites among the hosts,; citing Impress Watch, it adds a machine installed in December 2025 at the Kamisato service area on the Kan-etsu Expressway.

For a design guide, Lawson Bank shows how a bank can borrow the warmth of a convenience store, from its shared name and colours to branches named after onigiri and dessert. Compare Lawson, the store chain that founded it, and Seven Bank, the earlier store-based ATM bank. For this guide we use a counter blue, a navy and a milk white with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lawson Bank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.