Credit Saison Co., Ltd. (株式会社クレディセゾン), commonly known as Credit Saison (クレディセゾン) or simply Saison (セゾン), is a Japanese financial services company affiliated to Mizuho Financial Group. Founded in 1951, Credit Saison is the 3rd largest credit card issuer with over 20 million cardholders in Japan, behind JCB and Visa Japan.
History
Credit Saison was founded in 1946 as Midoriya (緑屋) by Torajiro Okamoto. It was originally an operator of department stores specialized in installment selling.
Seibu Retailing Group, one of the (now former) subsidiaries of Seibu Railway, purchased Midoriya in 1976, attempting to add financial services to its portfolio of customer services. Midoriya's retailing division was transferred to Seibu Department Stores, and Midoriya itself was renamed Seibu Credit (西武クレジット) retaining the credit management division.
Seibu Railway spun off Seibu Retailing in 1983 and Seibu Retailing was rebranded as Saison Group. Seibu Credit issued the first Saison Card in 1983. Seibu Credit finally rebranded itself as Credit Saison in 1989, standing as one of the Big Five core businesses of Saison Group.
Following the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in the 1990s, Saison Group fell into financial difficulties.