I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at PayPay in May 2026
Interview
The process consisted of a coding assessment (GCA) followed by a first-round interview. The assessment included 4 algorithm problems, one of which was a fairly complex simulation-type problem that required careful handling of many edge cases. I passed the assessment and the first-round interview stage, but was ultimately rejected afterward without any specific feedback on the reason.
The communication throughout — including emails and the interview itself — was conducted in Japanese, so a solid level of business Japanese would be helpful.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
The first-round interview went deep into the technical details and design decisions behind my past engineering projects, with detailed follow-up questions on the trade-offs I made.
Process is very lengthy. They take 2-3 days to respond after giving interview and availability. It took almost 4 weeks to complete only 3 rounds including online coding test.
Apart from this experience was good, type of questions were good. Dont know how they evaluate candidate as in 3rd round (system design) I was able to give all answers including wireframe, API contract, rendering strategies, routes, modules but still didnt get selected. As mentioned in other comments they only want answer what they want to hear.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Online Coding
- 2 easy & 1 medium leetcode like questions ( brackets validation, processes etc)
1st Loop
- JavaScript questions like event loop, promises
- Some easy leetcode questions
2nd Loop
- System design chatbot like ChatGPT, Copilot
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at PayPay (Ōsaka, Osaka) in Aug 2025
Interview
After interviewing with them, I completely understand why Japanese companies have the worst reputation in my developer community. They seem to be out of touch with reality, testing interview questions that you wouldn’t actually use in the real world
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Codesignal medium-hard question, depending on your luck