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Japan’s three largest banking groups have completed a joint trial of a yen-denominated stablecoin for cross-border payments, a proof of concept that ran from July 17 to July 23, 2026, according to U.Today. Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation took part alongside Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation and technology firm TISI, with the results announced on October 16.
The test used payments between Mitsubishi Corporation’s Japanese operations and its overseas offices as its case study. Participants walked the stablecoin through issuance, transfer and redemption, and the tokens were issued as “trust beneficiary rights” and cycled from issuance back to final redemption into fiat without failures, U.Today reported.
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Key facts
- Mizuho, MUFG and SMBC conducted the proof of concept from July 17 to July 23, 2026, with results announced on October 16, 2026, per TheNewsCrypto.
- The three banks acted as joint principals commissioning issuance, while Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking served as trustee, Crypto Briefing reported.
- The token was structured as a specified trust beneficiary right under Japan’s Payment Services Act, with bank deposits as the underlying assets.
- Japan’s Financial Services Agency supported the project through its FinTech Proof-of-Concept Hub in November 2025.
- The proposed model is designed to circulate across the three banks’ verified customer networks without a fixed issuance cap.
What the trial covered
Beyond the issuance and redemption cycle, the participants assessed system performance, operational requirements and compliance measures for cross-border transactions, including anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing controls, according to TheNewsCrypto. Mitsubishi UFJ Trust reviewed trust-related operations, trust asset management and user protection measures, while TISI integrated the wallet infrastructure with the issuance system. SMBC supplied the blockchain platform built with TISI.
The companies described the current arrangements as design assumptions that could change as development continues. Crypto Briefing noted that the banks first set out their plans in June, formalising a basic agreement and establishing a council to coordinate development of a fiat-pegged stablecoin targeted for fiscal 2026.
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Where XRP fits
Ripple does not appear in the consortium’s documents, and U.Today said the group’s own digital yen on the Progmat platform — built by MUFG on the Avalanche blockchain — reads as an attempt by the megabanks to build an isolated alternative to external liquidity bridges such as XRP, to keep control of compliance and fees within the traditional banking vertical.
The same account traces the link back to 2017, when MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC joined a banking consortium under SBI Ripple Asia to implement RippleNet for domestic and cross-border settlements. More recently, Mizuho Bank and SMBC’s investment arm concluded agreements with Ripple Labs to deploy real-world asset tokenisation infrastructure and institutional DeFi solutions on the XRP Ledger. U.Today argued the outcome may be a segmented market, with the closed megabank and Progmat infrastructure serving conservative intra-corporate B2B transfers while Ripple’s regulated dollar stablecoin RLUSD, launched by SBI Holdings, and XRP liquidity hold cross-border retail and open fintech services.
Why it matters
The trial gives Japan’s largest lenders a tested template for issuing a yen stablecoin jointly rather than through a single institution, and the FSA’s involvement signals regulatory comfort with the trust-beneficiary structure. For readers tracking corporate blockchain payments, the result matters less as a settled commercial product than as evidence that the consortium model clears the operational and compliance hurdles the banks set out to test. How the banks position this infrastructure against existing XRP Ledger deployment by their own subsidiaries will shape which rails carry Japanese corporate settlement in the coming years.
What to watch
The banks said they will keep working through outstanding issues — user protection, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, governance and system stability — before moving toward practical use. In June they said they were aiming to begin actual transactions during fiscal 2026, which ends in March 2027; whether that timeline holds is the next concrete marker. The three banks are also pursuing related blockchain projects covering traditional asset trading, ownership transfers and trade settlement through TradeWaltz.
This article is not financial advice. Crypto and stablecoin markets are volatile and uncertain, and nothing here should be read as a recommendation or a prediction of future value.
Sources: U.Today, TheNewsCrypto, Crypto Briefing
