LINE Official Account for Businesses Targeting Japan

A LINE Official Account is a business account inside LINE, the messaging app most people in Japan use every day. It lets you send messages to customers who have added you as a friend, chat with them one to one, and offer coupons and menus inside the chat screen. If your customers are in Japan, it is often the channel they expect you to have.

All product details below come from LY Corporation’s official LINE for Business pages, which are in Japanese. Translations are ours.

Key facts (as of October 2026)

LINE has 100 million monthly active users in Japan, according to LY Corporation’s own figures as of the end of March 2026 (LINE for Business).

There are three plans: Communication (¥0, 200 messages a month), Light (¥5,000, 5,000 messages), and Standard (¥15,000, 30,000 messages). Prices exclude tax (LINE for Business: Plans).

Only the Standard plan can send extra messages beyond its monthly allowance. Since October 1, 2026, extra messages cost ¥3 each up to 200,000 a month and ¥2.5 each above that, excluding tax (LY Corporation notice).

Chat and auto-reply messages don’t count toward your message allowance (LINE for Business: Plans).

Since June 25, 2025, you must connect a new account to a Business Manager organization when you create it (Account creation manual).

What is a LINE Official Account?

LY Corporation describes it as a business service that lets companies and stores send information directly to customers on LINE (LINE for Business). Users “add” your account as a friend. After that, your messages appear in their LINE chat list next to messages from friends and family.

That placement is the main difference from email: your messages arrive in the app people use to talk to each other.

Why does LINE matter for reaching customers in Japan?

The official numbers are large. LY Corporation states that LINE has 100 million users, based on monthly active users of the LINE app at the end of March 2026 (its own survey). It also says that more than about 80% of Japan’s population uses LINE. That figure is its 100 million users divided by Japan’s total population of 123,367,000 as of December 1, 2025, from the Statistics Bureau (LINE for Business).

These are the vendor’s own figures. Use them to size the opportunity, not to forecast results.

Which account type should you choose?

LINE Official Accounts come in two types (Account types).

	Unverified account (未認証アカウント)	Verified account (認証済アカウント)
Who can get one	Anyone, individual or company	Accounts that pass LY Corporation’s review
Badge	No green badge	Green verification badge
Shows up in LINE in-app search	No	Yes
Basic features (messages, chat, coupons, rich menu)	Yes	Yes
Paid plans	Yes	Yes

A verified account adds several benefits. The official verified-account page lists these (Verified accounts):

The green badge, and your account becomes searchable inside the LINE app.
Invoice payment through LY Corporation’s “Paid” service.
Free posters and paid novelty items with your QR code, to collect friends.
Friend-add ads (友だち追加広告) across LINE services.
Placement in LINE’s official account listings.
The Membership feature and free-text answers in satisfaction surveys.

Review takes 5 to 10 business days, and some industries can’t be verified (Verified accounts). The page doesn’t list which industries, so check before you plan around a verified badge.

How do you open a LINE Official Account?

You can open an account on the web or in the LINE Official Account app. These are the official web steps (Account creation manual):

Open the LINE公式アカウントをはじめよう (Get started) page and click LINE公式アカウントをはじめる.
Log in with a Business ID. You can use a personal LINE account or an email address.
If you choose email, enter the address, select 登録用のリンクを送信 (send registration link), and click the link in the email you receive.
Enter the account details. Since June 25, 2025, you must also connect the account to a Business Manager organization.
Log in to the management screen (LINE Official Account Manager). Setup is complete.

The app flow is similar, with an added SMS verification step. You finish by selecting アカウントを作成 (create account).

To apply for a verified account, you go through a separate review after creating the account (Verified accounts).

What if your company is outside Japan?

LY Corporation announced that from July 22, 2026, accounts and channels of companies located outside Japan can be connected to organizations in Business Manager. That makes features such as audience linking and friend-add ads available to overseas companies (Business Manager notice).

Two conditions matter:

When you create a Business Manager organization, “company/business location country or region” is now a required field.
That country or region must match the location of each account or channel you connect.

The notice also says some regions can’t use Business Manager or LINE ad connections, without listing them. We could not find an official page that covers every requirement for overseas companies, so confirm with LY Corporation’s support before you start.

How much does a LINE Official Account cost?

Pricing is a monthly plan fee plus, on the Standard plan only, optional extra messages. These are the official Japanese prices as of October 2026, excluding tax (LINE for Business: Plans).

Plan	Monthly fee	Free messages per month	Extra messages
Communication (コミュニケーションプラン)	¥0	200	Not available
Light (ライトプラン)	¥5,000	5,000	Not available
Standard (スタンダードプラン)	¥15,000	30,000	Available

New accounts start on the Communication plan. On the Standard plan, extra messages are priced by volume. LY Corporation revised the rates on October 1, 2026: ¥3 per message for use up to 200,000 a month, and ¥2.5 per message for extra messages beyond 200,000 (LY Corporation notice). The notice says the change applies to Japan.

A few more rules from the plan page:

To send extra messages, you must set an upper limit. When you reach it, sending stops.
The monthly fee is paid in advance at the start of the month. Extra message fees are billed afterwards, around the 10th of the following month.
If you upgrade in the middle of a month, you pay the difference, the new plan applies right away, and you get the difference in messages.

The English-language LY for Business site does not show these plans, so use the Japanese plan page as your reference.

How are messages counted?

LINE counts messages as number of sends × number of friends who receive them (LINE for Business: Plans).

One broadcast can contain up to three speech bubbles, and it still counts as one message per recipient. So one broadcast to 1,000 friends uses 1,000 messages. Four broadcasts a month to those same 1,000 friends use 4,000, which already exceeds the Communication plan and fits within the Light plan.

LINE chat and auto-reply messages are free and don’t count.

What are the core features?

The official feature list includes message broadcasts, LINE chat, shop cards, coupons, the rich menu, a business profile, step messages, audience targeting, LINE Call, surveys, and Membership (LINE for Business). These are the ones most teams start with.

Feature	What it does
Broadcasts (メッセージ配信)	Send text, images, coupons, and other content to your friends. Up to three bubbles per send.
Targeted broadcasts	Narrow recipients by attributes or audiences instead of sending to everyone.
Step messages (ステップ配信)	Send a sequence automatically to friends who match conditions, such as days since they added you or how they found you. Step messages count toward your allowance (LINE for Business column).
Rich menu (リッチメニュー)	A menu fixed at the bottom of the chat screen.
LINE chat (LINEチャット)	One-to-one conversation with individual users.
Coupons (クーポン)	Digital coupons customers can use, for example in your store. Deliver them in the greeting message, a broadcast, or the rich menu (LINE for Business column).

Broadcasts and segmentation

LY Corporation’s guide to targeting lists five attributes for narrowing a broadcast: time as a friend, gender, age, OS, and area. You can also build audiences, such as users who clicked or opened a past message, users tagged in chat, or users who added you from a specific source (LINE for Business column). That guide was first published in 2019, so check the current options in LINE Official Account Manager before you plan a campaign around one attribute.

There is also a setting called 一部のターゲットへの配信を許可する (allow delivery to some targets). When you set a cap on the number of messages, LINE picks recipients at random up to that cap (Manual: partial broadcast). This is useful if you are near your monthly limit. It is not a substitute for real targeting.

The rich menu is “a menu fixed at the bottom of the chat screen (keyboard area).” You can link it to coupons, the shop card, and external sites such as your online store or booking page (LINE for Business column). Use it for the two or three actions customers ask for most.

LINE chat

LINE chat lets your staff talk with each friend individually through the normal LINE chat screen. The basic feature is free. A paid Chat Pro option, launched in March 2025, adds longer chat history and more tags and notes (LINE for Business column).

What should non-Japanese teams keep in mind?

These are practical suggestions, not official rules.

Write in natural Japanese. Your friends read your messages next to messages from people they know. Machine-translated copy stands out. Have a native speaker write or review every broadcast, coupon, and rich menu label.
Plan for a Japanese interface. The manuals, plan page, and most screen labels are in Japanese. Keep a glossary of the screens you use.
Schedule in Japan time. Japan Standard Time is UTC+9 and doesn’t use daylight saving time. Set your send times for your customers’ day, not your office’s.
Answer chat during Japanese business hours. If you turn on LINE chat, customers will expect replies. If you can’t staff it, say so clearly in your profile or auto-reply.
Budget by recipients, not by sends. Multiply your friend count by your planned sends per month, then pick the plan.
Send fewer, more useful messages. Every broadcast uses your allowance and can lead people to block you.

What rules do you need to follow?

LY Corporation publishes a LINE Official Account Guideline, last updated September 30, 2026 (LINE Official Account Guideline). Read it before you open an account. In summary, it:

Lists industries and content that can’t use the service, such as unapproved medicines, adult services, gambling, pyramid schemes, and counterfeit goods.
Prohibits messages that break the law, infringe rights, misrepresent who runs the account, or target minors with age-restricted products.
Prohibits confusing buttons and links that don’t work on mobile.
States that LY Corporation may delete content, suspend the service, or end the contract without prior notice when the guideline is breached.

Japanese laws on advertising and personal data also apply to what you send. This article doesn’t cover them. Get qualified advice if you are unsure.

Common mistakes

Underestimating message counts. Sending to everyone, every week, burns through the allowance fast. Each recipient counts, and so do automated step messages.
Choosing Light and then needing more. Only Standard can buy extra messages. On Communication or Light, you have to wait for next month or upgrade.
Forgetting the upper limit on Standard. When you hit the cap you set, delivery stops.
Expecting to be found in search without verification. Only verified accounts appear in LINE’s in-app search.

Next steps

Read the LINE Official Account Guideline and confirm your industry is allowed.
Create a Business ID and a Business Manager organization with the correct country or region.
Open the account and complete the profile in Japanese.
Apply for verification if you want in-app search and friend-add ads.
Estimate monthly messages (friends × sends) and choose a plan.
Set up a rich menu with your two or three most-requested actions.
Decide who answers chat, and when.
Recheck the official plan page before each budget cycle. Prices changed on October 1, 2026, and may change again.