Japan’s three megabanks weren’t just discussing the idea—they’ve completed a PoC for jointly issuing a yen stablecoin.
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking, and TISI issued an official announcement on October 16: they completed a joint stablecoin issuance and cross-border payment validation from July 17 to 23, 2026. This project was supported by the Japan Financial Services Agency’s FinTech PoC Hub—it wasn’t a private experiment.
The structure is very “bank-like”: three banks act as co-entrustors, a trust bank serves as the administrative trustee, and the stablecoin is structured as a specified trust beneficiary interest using a funds-settlement model. The use case involves cross-border payments between Mitsubishi Corporation’s Japan headquarters and its overseas offices, validating issuance, transfers, and redemption, as well as AML/CFT and system reliability in a multi-entrustor scenario.
A note on the distinction: this is the completion of a PoC, not a public launch. They still need to work through practical issues before assessing real-world deployment. On June 10, the three banks said they aimed to move ahead with live transactions in fiscal 2026 (through March 2027) and were studying a deposit-backed stablecoin for payments and remittances, aimed at users who have completed identity verification. This is part of the same initiative as today’s “verification completed” announcement, not a separate effort.
And don’t confuse this with the SBI news from this morning. SBI is piloting interoperability for a yen stablecoin within the US-dollar stablecoin alliance’s Open Standard; this announcement is about a joint issuance model developed by the three megabanks. Keep the two separate; this is not investment advice.