As the coronavirus pandemic is spreading rapidly throughout the world, at Mercari Group we are carefully monitoring new developments and making management decisions daily based on direction from various government bodies and health organizations. In recent days, the situation in Japan has unfortunately worsened, with Prime Minister Abe now declaring a state of emergency.
Mercari Group’s mission is to create value in a global marketplace where anyone can buy & sell. Today, we offer the Mercari marketplace service in both Japan and the US, as well as the Merpay mobile payment service in Japan.
Our mission is only accomplished if people are able to lead their normal, everyday lives. Not just our users, employees, business partners, and shareholders, but everyone around the world.
Going forward, we will continue to comply with all requests from government bodies, while ensuring the highest level of service and highest work productivity possible, even under these new circumstances.
Starting February 19, Mercari Group has already taken actions such as recommending employees to work from home, moving all internal and external meetings online, and suspending business trips and business meals in order to prioritize the safety of employees working at our offices around Japan, and to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Our US-based employees are already working entirely from home since mid-March, and have thankfully been able to maintain Mercari’s service level even under these new conditions. I thank our employees for their hard work and professionalism in these trying times.
As the next step in Japan, we will temporarily close our offices in Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka, and move entirely to a remote work system. We will also instruct employees in our Sendai office to work from home to the extent possible, and if necessary, move our Sendai team entirely to a remote work system as well. To help ease this transition, we have decided to pay our employees a grant of an additional 60,000 JPY (covering six months) to help cover the costs of setting up their work spaces at home, online team-building, and other related incidentals.
Mercari Group may not be able to contribute directly to saving lives, but we hope to contribute to society in this state of emergency by doing what we can: helping to deliver necessities and other items to improve life at home, helping people generate money for themselves in a time of need by selling items they no longer need, and helping people use that money through cashless payments in more locations both online and offline.
We will continue to take action to provide as much support as we can in these uncertain times, and we hope everyone continues to stay safe and healthy.
April 8, 2020
Shintaro Yamada
Founder and CEO
Mercari, Inc.