Japan's three biggest banks report a joint yen stablecoin trial, and name no sum

Japan's three biggest banks said on 16 October that a yen stablecoin they issued together had worked in its first trial. MUFG Bank, Mizuho Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation ran the test from 17 to 23 July, with Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking and a systems company, TISI. A stablecoin is a digital token meant to hold a steady value against an ordinary currency. The test was built around payments between the offices of Mitsubishi Corporation, the trading house, in Japan and abroad.

The coin rests on a trust. The three banks set one up with Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking as trustee, and the tokens are claims on it, one of the forms of stablecoin Japan's payments law allows. The money behind the coins is held as bank deposits. No ceiling caps how many may circulate, and only customers whose identity a bank has checked may hold them. The banks say this design may still change. Sumitomo Mitsui supplied the blockchain, a shared ledger that TISI built for it; the release does not name the underlying network.

The banks say they tested how a coin with several issuing banks would be run, how anti-money-laundering checks would work across different uses, and whether the systems held up. They report that the systems proved safe and reliable and that joint issuance is workable. They give no amounts, no count of payments and no name for the coin. The release describes the Mitsubishi payments as the case the test assumed, and does not say whether any of the company's money actually moved. CoinTurk, one of the outlets that covered it, calls the payment flows simulated.

The trial grew out of a programme run by the Financial Services Agency, Japan's financial regulator, which chose the project for its support in November 2025. In June the three banks said they would aim for real transactions in the financial year ending March 2027. They also set up a council to plan the coin together. JPYC, a registered money-transfer firm, already issues a yen stablecoin. The banks' coin would be issued jointly by the country's three biggest lenders, each bringing its own customers.

Much is still open. Beyond the March 2027 target there is no launch date. The banks say only that they will keep working with authorities at home and abroad on consumer protection, money-laundering controls, cyber security and system stability. So far the trial has been covered only by crypto trade outlets, CoinPost and CoinTurk among them, which largely restate the banks' release.