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Located in the ‘My Status’ section of the Garanti BBVA Mobile app, ‘My Credit Coach’ brings together a variety of features to provide practical advice and improve users’ financial habits. For example, it encourages customers to track their payment schedules and keep their personal information updated, while also providing clear explanations of various financial topics to boost financial literacy, such as how credit scores are calculated, and the difference between cash advances and loans.

The new tool also presents customers personalized credit, overdraft and credit card offers, tailored to meet their financial needs. Garanti BBVA plans to continue enhancing the tool, adding new, useful features over time.

By combining personalized advice, accessible educational resources and customized offers, My Credit Coach aims to stand by the bank’s customers in every step of their financial journey.

Sales of “recovery wear,” clothing marketed as promoting blood circulation and easing fatigue through the effects of far-infrared radiation, are surging.

Combined annual sales across major suppliers now exceed 3 million pieces, and the market is projected to continue expanding.

Many companies have been aggressively running advertisements featuring celebrities such as model Ai Tominaga, singer Sho Sakurai and actor Yo Oizumi.

This year, the term was shortlisted for the Buzzword of the Year award.

The garments are typically made from fabrics woven with finely processed minerals and other materials.

Recovery wear was officially recognized as a category of general medical devices in 2022 under the name of “home-use far-infrared clothing for promoting blood circulation,” which allowed companies to advertise certain therapeutic effects on the body.

Workman Co., a major workwear retailer, sold 1.6 million pieces from its Mediheal autumn-winter line between September and October. This led to the company revising its full-year earnings forecast upward in its interim financial report released in November.

Including spring items, total sales since January have reached about 2 million pieces.

A long-sleeved shirt costs just 1,900 yen ($12), exceptionally inexpensive relative to competing products.

Tential Inc., which was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Growth Market in February, sold more than 1 million pieces of its Bakune functional pajamas as of August.

Other major suppliers include Venex Co., a small company in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, that first commercialized recovery wear 15 years ago. Another is MTG Co., known for its beauty line Refa, which launched a dedicated recovery wear brand, Red, in July.

JMA Research Institute Inc. projects that domestic retail sales of recovery wear will see an increase of roughly ninefold to 170 billion yen in the year leading up to summer 2030 compared to the 18.9 billion yen recorded in the year through summer 2024.