Three of the largest banks in Japan are forming a consortium to issue a jointly operated stablecoin by the end of fiscal year 2026, Nikkei reported, extending a regulatory pilot that has been operating under the Financial Services Agency’s supervision since November 2025.
The plan involves Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), and Mizuho Financial Group. The token will start pegged to the yen, with a US dollar version following later in the year. It will run on Progmat, a distributed ledger platform developed by MUFG and NTT Data.
The three banks are not chasing retail wallets at launch. Their combined enterprise client base covers more than 300,000 companies, giving the token immediate distribution scale without the regulatory friction of consumer onboarding.
The FSA’s choice to run the November pilot with all three institutions simultaneously, rather than sequentially, signals a preference for a single shared standard over competing bank tokens.
That approach fits a broader Japan yen stablecoin shift in which private and public actors have moved toward a common infrastructure. Separately, an SBI Shinsei and JPMorgan deal shows Japan’s mid-tier lenders are also pursuing tokenized deposits on parallel tracks.
Bank Stablecoins Go Cross-Border
The megabank plan lands as globally licensed banks begin shipping deposit tokens at scale. JPMorgan brought JPMD to Coinbase’s Base network earlier this year, bridging Kinexys to public rails and enabling institutional clients to receive round-the-clock dollar settlement.
SoFi pushed its SoFiUSD bank token to its roughly 15 million members in May 2026, making it one of the first consumer-facing bank stablecoins in the US.
The thread connecting all three programs is a shift away from third-party tokens like Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) toward instruments issued directly by regulated balance sheets. Stablecoins eclipsed ACH network volumes in the U.S. this year, sharpening the competitive pressure on legacy payment infrastructure.
What remains open for the Japanese consortium is the governance structure. Whether the three banks issue a single token under one brand or operate shared rails that each bank draws on separately will determine how replicable the model is for other multi-institution stablecoin efforts.
