Toyota Motor Corporation plans to launch in Japan next month a sophisticated array of services centered on a credit-card account, according to the March 8 online edition of the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal, citing Toyota executives, said the plan intensifies a campaign to more than double Toyota's operating profit from financial services.

Toyota will offer its credit card starting in April through Toyota Financial Services Corporation, which was established last year, and hopes to have five million cardholders by March 2005, Hideto Ozaki, president of Toyota Financial Services, was quoted as saying.

Toyota Financial Services is the subsidiary that runs Toyota's auto-loan, car-insurance and other financial services.

The company is expanding its automotive-loan business and offering new financial products, such as asset-management accounts, the Journal reported.

Japan's biggest automaker said it hopes to earn 100 billion yen ($841.2 million) in operating profit from financial services by March 2005, up from 36.1 billion yen in the year ended March 2000, the Journal said.

Under the plans outlined by Ozaki, Toyota credit-card holders in Japan will be able to open asset-management accounts through another Toyota subsidiary, Toyota Financial Services Securities Corporation, which begins operations next month, according to the Journal.

The report said account holders will be able to invest in mutual funds or automatically make car-loan and insurance payments from the accounts.

Toyota has no plans to manage mutual funds itself, according to the Journal.