HEARTBEATS, the Tokyo company behind the ORICAL digital trading card service, has raised ¥1.25bn (about $8m) in debt financing, including a commitment line, from five Japanese lenders. The company announced the loans on 23 October 2026.
The lenders are Shoko Chukin Bank, Japan Finance Corporation, Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank and Resona Bank. The loans run for up to nine years, are unsecured and have no guarantee, and come without stock acquisition rights, so the banks get no option to take equity.
What HEARTBEATS does
ORICAL is a collection service for electronic trading cards. Rights holders such as professional baseball teams and artists issue official digital cards through it, and fans collect them to show their support.
As of September 2026 the service had 26 partners, including 10 professional baseball teams. BRIDGE listed the Seibu Lions, Chiba Lotte Marines, Yakult Swallows, Chunichi Dragons, Rakuten Eagles, Nippon-Ham Fighters, Orix Buffaloes and Hiroshima Carp among them. Other partners named by BRIDGE include the Japan Sumo Association, the women's wrestling promotion Stardom, Tsuburaya Productions for Ultraman cards, the professional mahjong M.League and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
HEARTBEATS was founded in November 2017 and is based in Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo. Its representative director and president is Yuta Umezawa. The company had 177 employees in September 2026, 122 of them full-time, and says it will keep hiring mid-career staff.
Debt on top of a Series C
The loans complete a funding round that began with equity. In July and August 2026 HEARTBEATS raised about ¥2.3bn in a Series C round, or about ¥2.5bn including secondary share sales. With the new debt, the company puts the total for the round at ¥3.55bn.
The company said the equity is meant for growth spending such as new businesses, product development and hiring, while the debt is meant to support working capital and strengthen its finances. BRIDGE reported that HEARTBEATS will keep investing in product development, hiring and signing partners, with the aim of adding partnerships and starting new businesses.
Neither the company nor BRIDGE gave a valuation or a total for all funding raised to date.
What the lenders said
HEARTBEATS drew on both state-backed and commercial lenders. Japan Finance Corporation and Shoko Chukin Bank were joined by three of the country’s large commercial banks, Mizuho, MUFG and Resona.
In comments included with the announcement, the lenders said they would support the company over the medium to long term. MUFG Bank said it backed the company’s effort to create new value in Japan’s entertainment industry, and Japan Finance Corporation said ORICAL went beyond ordinary merchandise by offering fans a new kind of experience connecting them with the teams and characters they follow. Shoko Chukin Bank said sports and entertainment should be more than just pastimes.
On the same day, the Tokyo software company Knowledge Work also announced bank debt to close out its own funding round, another case of Japanese banks lending to venture-backed companies alongside equity investors.
Company website: heartbeats-inc.co.jp