Japan's three megabanks complete joint yen stablecoin pilot

Japan's three largest banks — Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), Mizuho Bank and MUFG Bank — have completed a test of a jointly issued yen stablecoin for cross-border corporate payments, they said in a joint press release on Friday. The trial ran from July 17 to 23, 2026, and used payments between Mitsubishi Corporation's Japanese and overseas offices as the test case.

How the pilot worked

• Legal form: the tokens were issued as "specified trust receivable rights" under Japan's Payment Services Act, under a trust agreement set up jointly by the three banks.
• Trust bank: Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking acted as agent trustee, handling the trust operations and user-protection measures.
• Technology: SMBC supplied the blockchain platform, built by TISI Inc., which also connected wallet infrastructure to the issuance system.
• Backing: under the design the banks currently envisage, trust assets are held in bank deposits and the coin circulates only among users who have passed identity checks at the banks, with no circulation cap.
• Support: the project was selected in November 2025 for the Financial Services Agency's FinTech PoC Hub.

What the banks found

The participants say they confirmed the system's safety and reliability, the feasibility of a model in which several banks issue one coin together, and the full cycle of issuance, transfer and redemption. They also checked how cross-border payments would work with multiple customers, and how anti-money-laundering rules apply across different use cases.

What's next

In June the banks announced plans to start live transactions with the jointly issued stablecoin in fiscal 2026 (April 2026 to March 2027) and set up a council to work through governance and operations. Friday's release says they will now assess remaining issues before real-world launch, stressing that the design "may be subject to change".

Banks worldwide are testing tokenised money in parallel — Deutsche Bank is about to launch crypto custody under MiCA, and South Korea is tightening security rules for crypto firms. For the basics, read what is a stablecoin.