Who lent to Zentoshin? A payment agent's collapse and the regional banks it took down
Few people had heard of the company that went bankrupt on 6 July. Zentoshin, a credit-card settlement agent in Osaka, was no household name. Yet it sat beneath the cash flow of restaurants and the night-time economy across Japan, working as their plumbing. Its liabilities came to about ¥125.9bn (roughly $790m), the largest corporate failure of the year and the first above ¥100bn since Drone Net in December 2025 (TDB, TSR). Its collapse pulled a scatter of regional banks down with it. ...