Japanese Financial Giant to Launch Blockchain Pay Platform

Japanese financial giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) has unveiled plans to launch a new blockchain-based online payment network.

The company has struck a deal with American cloud service provider Akamai, who say that the network’s architecture will allow it to process over a million transactions per second “at latencies of less than two seconds per transaction,” with underlying blockchain architecture that is “expected to be extensible to 10 million transactions per second.”

The MUFG-Akamai network will be “permissioned,” which means that only authorized users can join, place orders and confirm payments.

Nobuyuki Hirano, the CEO of MUFG, said, in an official statement, “We have high expectations for our partnership with Akamai. We want to provide customers the ability to support significantly greater volumes of high-speed payment transactions without compromising the level of security required for payment networks.”

The deal comes as MUFG edges closer toward commercializing its digital MUFG Coin fiat. The company has already issued MUFG Coins to employees, but last week announced it would extend its issuance to 100,000 account holders at MUFG Bank starting next year, and says it is “in discussion with potential business partners.”

MUFG Coins are pegged to the yen, claims MUFG, so that 1 token is always worth 1 yen.