JCB

Cloudflare and DigiCert work together to ensure a flawless migration to Cloudflare

Established in 1961, JCB Co., Ltd. is a Japanese credit card company. JCB is the only international credit card brand in Japan with over 140 million members and approximately 39 million merchants (as of March 2022). They handle all kinds of operations related to card payments, including card issuance and merchant acquisition. In recent years, they have been actively developing advanced services, such as diversification of payment schemes, contactless rechargeable prepaid card payments, mobile apps and biometric authentication. Their highly visited website gets over 20 million page views each month.

Rising costs for rapid increases in traffic and online threats

JCB had previously used another CDN provider, but the service and pricing were not satisfactory. The JCB website was experiencing rapid increases in traffic during specific periods, such as during marketing campaigns, which resulted in high operational fees as pricing was determined by the number of page views. On top of that, in order to keep the website reliable and secure, JCB had to deploy web security solutions, such as DDoS mitigation, to protect against online threats.

Cloudflare's features and pricing are the best match for JCB

The establishment of Cloudflare’s Japan office in July 2020 was also a critical factor in Cloudflare being selected by JCB.

Mr. Rei Kakinuma, Assistant Vice President, Digital Solutions Development Department at JCB Co.,Ltd. explains the reasoning behind their decision to migrate to Cloudflare, "We believe that using Cloudflare would not only keep our costs down, but it is also feature-rich and highly performant. On top of that, Cloudflare is renowned for web security & DDoS attack mitigation mechanisms and it is one of the top services in the industry."

To JCB’s delight, their analytics revealed that by using Cloudflare Argo Smart Routing, which routes web traffic across the fastest and most reliable network paths, it resulted in a 65% faster web response time.

DigiCert and Cloudflare teamed up to support migration

As a Cloudflare partner, DigiCert played a critical role in JCB's migration to Cloudflare. Mr. Kakinuma reflects, "For JCB, one of the biggest advantages was being able to discuss the technology in-depth with our main contact at DigiCert. We felt reassured and benefited from receiving prompt and reliable support from Cloudflare's technicians."

Looking forward to additional Cloudflare features and innovations

When JCB first started using Cloudflare, the focus was on CDN and DDoS protection. As JCB continues to expand, they look to add on WAF and other services. Mr. Kakinuma explains, "Shortly after the Log4j vulnerability was announced to the public, I saw an email from Cloudflare saying, 'It's been dealt with.' That was an example that with Cloudflare, it is now possible for JCB to fully focus our resources on our business instead of spending time concerned about security measures."

Mr. Kakinuma is excited about Cloudflare’s product roadmap and innovation velocity. JCB intends to continue exploring and extending how they use Cloudflare as the company continues to grow.