Japan megabanks to launch joint yen stablecoin on Progmat

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group plan to jointly issue a yen-pegged stablecoin on MUFG’s Progmat distributed ledger by the end of fiscal 2026. The Financial Services Agency began a regulatory pilot involving the three banks in November 2025. A U.S. dollar-pegged version is scheduled to follow later in 2026.

The banks intend to use the token for corporate settlement rather than retail wallets at launch. Their combined enterprise client base exceeds 300,000 companies, which would provide immediate distribution scale without consumer onboarding.

The stablecoin will operate on Progmat, a distributed ledger platform developed by MUFG with NTT Data. The FSA ran the November 2025 pilot with all three banks at once, rather than in sequence, creating a shared standard for the program.

Details on governance and issuance remain unresolved. The banks have not decided whether to issue a single shared token under one brand or to create shared rails that let each institution issue and manage its own tokens. That decision will affect how other banks could join the system and how custody, redemption and compliance are handled.

Focusing first on corporate clients reduces the regulatory and operational steps associated with consumer onboarding. Initial uses identified include intercompany payments, payroll and supplier settlements, with settlement available 24 hours a day and backed by regulated bank balance sheets.

The launch follows broader activity among licensed banks issuing deposit tokens. JPMorgan moved its JPM Deposit token onto a public network this year to enable around-the-clock dollar settlement. In the United States, SoFi issued SoFiUSD to its roughly 15 million members in May 2026. Stablecoin transaction volumes in the U.S. have exceeded ACH network volumes this year.

Other lenders are pursuing tokenized deposit arrangements on parallel tracks, including a collaboration involving SBI, Shinsei and JPMorgan. Planned dollar-denominated issuance and the shared-rail design could enable cross-border and institutional uses if regulators and market participants approve the required operational and governance frameworks.