Rakuten Bank-Securities Link Surpasses 7 Million Accounts

Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities said their Money Bridge account-linking service has surpassed 7 million configured accounts, giving the Japanese financial group another measure of how widely customers are connecting its banking and brokerage platforms. The milestone was announced on August 25, less than a year after the service passed 6 million settings on September 10, 2025.

The figure is a count of Money Bridge settings, not 7 million newly opened bank or brokerage accounts and not a measure of active traders. Rakuten Bank had 18.46 million accounts at the end of June, while Rakuten Securities reported 14.39 million general securities accounts. Put beside those totals, 7 million is equal to roughly 38% of the bank account count and 49% of the securities account count, but those ratios should be read only as scale comparisons because the underlying account totals do not represent a single pool of unique customers.

Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities said in their August 25 announcement that Money Bridge has been available since April 2011. Customers who hold both accounts can enroll free of charge, after which the service can automate cash movement between deposits and investments and apply other linked-account benefits.

Money Bridge turns bank deposits into brokerage funding

At the center of Money Bridge is an automatic sweep between Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities. If a customer makes an eligible securities purchase and the brokerage account lacks enough cash, the shortfall can be pulled automatically from the customer’s Rakuten Bank deposit balance. Money remaining in the securities account can then be transferred back to the bank during the night on each business day, reducing the need for separate deposit and withdrawal instructions.

Cash returned to the bank can qualify for a preferential ordinary-deposit rate when the Money Bridge setting requirements are met. The Rakuten Securities Money Bridge page listed an annual pre-tax rate of 0.48% on the portion of an eligible ordinary-deposit balance up to ¥10 million and 0.42% on the portion above ¥10 million as of August 3. The corresponding after-tax rates were 0.382% and 0.334%. Rakuten says the rates are variable, and the preferential rate for a month generally requires the link to have been completed by the end of the previous month.

Eligible sweep products cover a broad set of yen-funded investments, including domestic shares, yen-settled U.S. shares, investment funds, bonds, initial and secondary offerings, managed-account products, precious metals and certain foreign-currency money-market funds bought in yen. Money Bridge also supports balance viewing and eligibility for Rakuten Bank’s Happy Program, through which qualifying securities activity can earn Rakuten points and affect customer benefit levels.

Rakuten has extended the bank-brokerage relationship beyond day-to-day cash movement. In June 2025, the companies introduced a securities-backed loan that lets eligible customers borrow from Rakuten Bank using domestic listed shares held at Rakuten Securities as collateral. The current securities product page says customers can retain shareholder rights such as dividends and benefits under the loan’s terms and continue trading pledged shares, subject to the product rules.

The latest one million settings were added in 349 days

Money Bridge reached 6 million settings on September 10, 2025, making the move to 7 million a gain of one million settings over 349 days. Rakuten’s 2025 milestone release said the bank had passed 17 million accounts at the end of May that year, while Rakuten Securities had more than 12.56 million general accounts at the end of June. By June 2026, those reported totals had risen to 18.46 million and 14.39 million, respectively, so the linking milestone arrived while both underlying customer bases were still expanding.

Rakuten does not separate the account-link growth into new customers and existing customers who activated Money Bridge later. Rakuten’s milestone releases do not disclose monthly activations or cancellations, nor do they say how many of the 7 million settings are used frequently. They also do not provide trading volume, average linked deposits or revenue attributable to Money Bridge in the August 25 announcement, limiting how far the setting count can be used as an engagement or profitability measure.

Product economics for linked depositors have also changed since the 6 million milestone. In September 2025, Rakuten’s release listed a 0.28% pre-tax rate on the portion of ordinary deposits up to ¥3 million and 0.22% above that amount. The current structure raises the higher-rate balance threshold to ¥10 million and lists rates of 0.48% and 0.42%. Those changes make the present product terms materially different from a year earlier, but Rakuten has not said that the higher rates or expanded threshold caused the latest increase in settings.

The milestone lands ahead of Rakuten’s fintech reorganization

Timing adds another layer to the milestone because Rakuten is preparing to reorganize more of its financial operations around Rakuten Bank. In a July message, the bank said shareholders had approved a plan under which Rakuten Card and Rakuten Securities Holdings would become its subsidiaries, with the integration process moving toward an effective date of October 1, 2026. The bank has described cross-selling through collaboration with other Rakuten businesses as one of its key marketing priorities.

Money Bridge fits that strategy in a way that goes beyond convenience for individual investors. Automatic sweeps can keep brokerage funding inside the group’s financial network, while cash not being used for investments can return to a Rakuten Bank deposit account. The companies’ 7 million announcement highlights that connection and the securities-backed loan as examples of services built around the wider Rakuten ecosystem, although it does not quantify the contribution of either service to deposits, brokerage revenue or group earnings.

Rakuten also described its June account bases as the largest within comparison groups it defined from publicly disclosed competitor data. The bank’s claim covers a set of domestic digital banks, while the securities comparison covers major online and face-to-face brokers and includes methodological qualifications for firms that disclose account figures differently. Those are company-calculated rankings rather than a separate regulatory league table, so the underlying 18.46 million and 14.39 million account counts are the more useful figures for judging the scale of the two platforms.

Money Bridge has added another million configured links since September 2025 and now connects a large number of Rakuten Bank and Rakuten Securities accounts, even though the public setting count does not show how intensively those links are used. October 1 is the next concrete date for the wider finance business, when Rakuten Bank says the approved fintech reorganization is expected to become effective.