Rakuten Bank Brand Guidelines: eBANK, a 2010 Rename and a Tokyo Listing

An internet bank before the Rakuten name.

Rakuten Bank began as eBANK Corporation (イーバンク銀行), an internet bank in Tokyo. A February 2009 notice from Rakuten gives its incorporation date as 14 January 2000, its head office as Chiyoda-ku in Tokyo, and its business as banking through electronic media, mainly payments. In the same notice Rakuten described eBANK as the internet-only bank with the largest number of accounts in Japan, about three million at the time.

Rakuten’s involvement came in steps. The two companies signed a capital and business alliance in September 2008, under which Rakuten took preferred shares in the bank, and Rakuten planned to bring the personal-loan business of its subsidiary Rakuten Credit together with the bank’s. On 10 February 2009 Rakuten said it had received the approval it needed from Japan’s Financial Services Agency to hold the bank’s voting rights as a major shareholder, had converted its preferred shares into ordinary shares, and would treat eBANK as a consolidated subsidiary from the first quarter of 2009. Rakuten’s own company history records the acquisition as February 2009. Rakuten said at the time that the deal would give the group access to eBANK’s customer base and give Rakuten users access to the bank’s payment services.

A new name followed. In June 2009 the bank’s board proposed changing its trade name to Rakuten Bank, Ltd. (楽天銀行) and moving its head office to Shinagawa, to the building that then housed Rakuten’s own headquarters. Rakuten said the new name would make the bank’s place in the group clear and help it work with other group companies, and that the move was part of cost cutting at the bank. In January 2010 the bank set 4 May 2010 as the date for the new name, and by June 2010 its announcements were issued as Rakuten Bank.

ATMs, accounts and a Tokyo listing.

As Rakuten Bank, the business stayed an internet-only bank, as its own announcements put it, and reached cash through other networks. In June 2010 it announced ATM partnerships with E-net and Lawson ATM Networks, which from late August that year let holders of its cash cards use machines in FamilyMart, Ministop and Lawson convenience stores and elsewhere — more than 17,000 machines across Japan, the bank said.

Rakuten’s company history lists later milestones in the group’s own words. In January 2021, it says, Rakuten Bank became the first online bank in Japan with more than ten million accounts, and in the same month the bank and Rakuten Card began business for Rakuten International Commercial Bank in Taiwan. In May 2024, the history adds, the bank launched an internet banking service for customers of the JR East group.

The bank went public in April 2023. Rakuten announced that Rakuten Bank’s common stock was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime Market on 21 April 2023. Writing that day, Euromoney reported that the bank and its lead manager, Daiwa Securities, had been working towards a listing since announcing the plan in July 2022, that the shares were sold below the range first indicated and then rose on their first day of trading, and that the deal was Japan’s biggest initial public offering since 2018. The magazine described Rakuten Bank as the country’s biggest internet lender, and set the listing against investor concerns about its parent’s spending on a national mobile network.

Screens, ATMs and two scripts.

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.

From group subsidiary to FinTech parent.

Rakuten Group kept control after the listing and later made the bank the centre of its financial businesses. On 20 May 2026 Rakuten Group and Rakuten Bank announced a definitive agreement under which the bank would make Rakuten Card and Rakuten Securities Holdings its subsidiaries through a share delivery, subject to approval at the bank’s shareholders’ meeting in June 2026. Rakuten said the bank’s shares would stay listed on the Prime Market, and that Mizuho Bank, a shareholder in Rakuten Card, was expected to become a major shareholder of the bank as a result. On 1 October 2026 Rakuten announced that the reorganisation had taken effect and that Rakuten Card and Rakuten Securities Holdings had become consolidated subsidiaries of Rakuten Bank. The bank’s head office is in Minato-ku, Tokyo, according to the May 2026 announcement.

The name has carried that group link since 2010. In announcing the date of the change, Rakuten said the aim was to make the bank’s position in the Rakuten group clear and to offer more convenient financial services by working with other group companies. The bank’s English and Japanese names, Rakuten Bank, Ltd. and 楽天銀行, have appeared side by side in Rakuten’s notices since the change was first proposed in 2009.

For a design guide, Rakuten Bank shows how an internet bank can be folded into a consumer group’s identity through a change of name while keeping its own stock-market listing. Compare Rakuten, the parent group, and PayPay Bank, another Japanese internet bank. For this guide we use a crimson, a deep ink and a warm white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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