Seven Bank Brand Guidelines: From IY Bank to an ATM in Every Seven-Eleven

A bank that opened with ATMs, not branches.

Seven Bank began as IY Bank. The bank’s own corporate history records a provisional banking licence on 6 April 2001, the company’s establishment as IY Bank on 10 April 2001, a full licence later that month and the start of business on 7 May 2001; its first ATMs went into service in Tokyo on 15 May. English Wikipedia says the initials came from Ito-Yokado, the general-merchandise chain of what is now the Seven & i group, and Japanese Wikipedia describes the bank as founded jointly by Ito-Yokado and Seven-Eleven Japan. Seven Bank itself says it started in 2001 in answer to customers who wanted ATMs inside Seven-Eleven stores.

The model was unusual for a Japanese bank. English Wikipedia says the early business ran mainly through the internet, with the ATMs placed in 7-Eleven convenience stores and Ito-Yokado stores, and Japanese Wikipedia classes it among the “new forms of bank” led by retailers. According to the company history, the first staffed branch opened inside the Ito-Yokado store in Soga on 27 April 2005, and on 11 October 2005 IY Bank took the name Seven Bank. Its ATMs had reached all 47 prefectures by 17 December 2007. The shares were listed on the JASDAQ market in February 2008 and on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2011, and since April 2022 they have traded on the Prime market.

Four generations of one machine.

The ATM is the product. Seven Bank calls its ATM platform the core of the company and says its domestic network of about 28,000 ATMs stands in Seven & i group stores including 7-Eleven, and in shopping centres, tourist destinations, airports and stations; its history page dates the 28,000 mark to April 2025. English Wikipedia, citing the bank, gives 27,422 machines in March 2024, second only to Japan Post Bank.

The machine has been redrawn in generations. The company history lists a first generation in 2001, a second from July 2005, a third from November 2010 and a fourth from September 2019, and the bank says its new-type ATM received a Good Design Award in October 2022. Foreign-issued cards were accepted from July 2007, which English Wikipedia says made the machines popular with visitors who need yen; the bank says screens and receipts for overseas cards were expanded to 12 languages in December 2015. Services were layered on top: an international money transfer service with Western Union from 2011, according to English Wikipedia; a cash card with a debit function in 2016; cash withdrawals by smartphone in 2017; and the “My Seven Bank” app, with instant account opening, in April 2020.

The network is now spreading beyond Seven-Eleven. ATM Marketplace reported in September 2025 that Seven Bank planned to place new machines in some 16,000 FamilyMart stores, which the publication said would give the bank around 44,000 ATMs in Japan and the largest network in the country. In June 2026 the same publication reported, citing The Japan Times, that FamilyMart had installed its first Seven Bank ATMs in Tokyo’s Minato Ward and planned to replace nearly all of its machines with them by 2030.

Beyond cash, the machines became a top-up point. The company history dates top-ups of the nanaco electronic money to September 2007 and of transport e-money to October 2018, and the bank says that with the spread of cashless payment many customers now use its ATMs to load a growing variety of payment methods. Personal card loans arrived in January 2010, and in January 2014 the ATM screens for Seven Bank account holders gained nine languages.

Japan’s digital and retail-group banks.

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.

Every day a better way.

Ownership has shifted over time. The bank’s shareholder table dated 30 September 2026 lists Seven-Eleven Japan with 33.38% and the trading house ITOCHU Corporation with 20.41%, ahead of trust banks and other investors. Outside Japan, Seven Bank says it applies its ATM know-how in the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. Its history records the purchase of the US operator Financial Consulting & Trading International, now FCTI, in October 2012, an Indonesian joint venture in 2014, a Philippine subsidiary in 2019, and ATM operations in Malaysia from January 2025 through a venture renamed Reachful Malaysia that May.

The bank sums itself up in a purpose statement adopted in April 2021, “We shape the future of everyday life by seeing your wishes and going beyond,” and an English slogan, “Every day a better way.” Its websites lead with practical blocks rather than imagery: an ATM locator, fees and hours, overseas cards, account opening by app, ATM or web, and an English site for customers who are not Japanese citizens, a group the bank says it serves with a range of services. The company also says it is working towards ATMs that can handle official procedures and identity checks, building on the fourth-generation machine.

For a design guide, Seven Bank shows how a bank identity can be carried by one piece of street furniture: an ATM, redrawn over four generations and placed where people already shop. Compare its parent group in the Seven & i Holdings brand guidelines and the retail-led bank that followed it, Aeon Bank. For this guide we use a counter navy, a signal orange and a store green on receipt white with a Japanese gothic sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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