MUFG, SMFG, and Mizuho will issue a trust-based stablecoin by March 2027, targeting ¥1 trillion in issuance by 2028 for B2B and cross-border payments.
Three of Japan's biggest banks are building a stablecoin together, a project that targets ¥1 trillion in issuance by 2028 and aims to modernize corporate payments in a country that still runs largely on cash.
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), and Mizuho Financial Group (MFG) announced on June 10 they will jointly issue stablecoins by March 2027. The structure is a trust agreement, with all three banks as joint settlors and a separate trust institution as trustee. That design keeps the stablecoin's reserves off any single bank's balance sheet.
The focus is business-to-business and cross-border transactions, not retail payments. A dedicated council is working on the operational rules covering issuance and compliance.
The initiative builds on Project Pax, a cross-border payments project launched in 2024 that runs on MUFG's Progmat digital ledger technology. Japan's Financial Services Agency has been overseeing the effort since November 2025.
Prior pilot work from the three banks targeted roughly ¥1 trillion (about $6.7 billion at current exchange rates) in stablecoin issuance by 2028. Japan remains overwhelmingly a cash economy, and the megabanks' stablecoin play is about modernizing the back-office infrastructure that moves money between corporations and across borders.
Japan's regulatory posture toward digital assets has shifted. The FSA's involvement since November 2025 signals this is a supervised, sanctioned initiative. Japan experienced the Mt. Gox collapse in 2014 and the Coincheck hack in 2018, events that made regulators deeply skeptical of crypto for years.
The ¥1 trillion target by 2028 creates a potential liquidity pool that could attract cross-border settlement activity from across Asia. MUFG's Progmat platform becomes significantly more valuable if it serves as the rails for a multi-bank stablecoin.
March 2027 is the stated timeline for launch. The FSA's early and active involvement since November 2025 suggests this initiative has regulatory backing that many prior banking consortium blockchain projects lacked.
MUFG carries an Alpha Score of 57, SMFG a 59, and MFG a 59, all rated Moderate in the Financial Services sector.
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