Under its “Closing the Distance” initiative, Line aims to be a bridge for connecting users while also giving them access to a 24-hour information window and services.

Line will also launch a series of new services, chiefly the Line Pay Card and Line Mobile.

It is a big move for the five-year-old Japan-based company.

Line chief executive Takeshi Idezawa yesterday told “Line Conference Tokyo 2016” that the company would connect users to other users, information, services, companies and brands – online and offline – any time and anywhere.

“Line’s goal is to become an entity that is as comfortable to be with as the family and friends that people have, providing an environment where anyone’s day may literally begin and end with the service,” Idezawa said.

In a bid to achieve the mission, Line also announced the launch of the Line business platform. The platform is designed to expand the functionality of the Line ad distribution by delivering more timely and relevant matching between users and businesses.

Line Pay allows online and offline payments via smartphones.

Line Mobile is the company’s move into the mobile-virtual-network-operator segment, with it designed to facilitate greater conformation and convenience through three themes.

They are quality (proving quality communication with DoCoMo), pricing (starting at 500 yen, or Bt157, per month) and +A – “something more”.

Line Mobile will be available from midyear, in Japan first.

The services accompanying these roll-outs are the Line business platform for the Web services of small and medium-sized enterprises, Line News, Line Live and Line Part Time Job.

Line also introduced a new character called Choco, Brown’s little sister, to target young users.

As of January last year, Line was available in 230 countries and had more than 215 million monthly active users. Its top four markets were Japan (68 million), Thailand (33 million), Indonesia (30 million) and (Taiwan 17 million).

Line recorded revenue of 120.7 billion yen in 2015, up from 86.4 billion in 2014, 39.6 billion in 2013 and 6.4 billion in 2012.