Japan’s Three Megabanks Plan Jointly Issued Stablecoin, Live by March 2027

Japan’s three largest banks said on Wednesday that they intend to run real commercial transactions with a jointly issued stablecoin before the end of March 2027, a step that puts some of the world’s biggest lenders directly into the business of issuing digital money on blockchain rails.

MUFG Bank, Mizuho Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) announced the plan in a joint statement dated June 10. The banks also signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a voluntary council that will work out how the token is run, governed and built.

What the banks announced

According to the joint release published by MUFG, the three banks aim to conduct actual commercial transactions during fiscal year 2026 using a stablecoin issued under a trust agreement. Under that structure, the three banks will act as joint settlors, and a trust bank or similar institution will act as trustee. Japan’s fiscal year 2026 runs until the end of March 2027.

The new council is meant to examine whether to build a shared issuance infrastructure, along with the design of systems, schemes and governance for the token. The statement says the banks will take relevant laws, regulations and market trends into account. It also says the council will consider how other financial institutions and stakeholders might join later, which leaves the door open to a wider banking network rather than a three-bank product.

The release was issued under the names of the three banks’ chief executives: Masakazu Osawa of MUFG Bank, Masahiko Kato of Mizuho Bank and Akihiro Fukutome of SMBC. It did not name a blockchain, give a launch date more precise than the fiscal year, or say which currency the token will track, though coverage has widely described it as a yen-linked project.

Built on a regulator-backed pilot

The announcement grows out of work that began last year. The banks said their discussions have run through a demonstration project selected in November as a supported project under the Financial Services Agency’s FinTech Proof-of-Concept Hub, a program the regulator uses to help firms test new financial services.

That backing matters. Japan was one of the first major economies to write stablecoins into law. Amendments to the Payment Services Act that took effect in 2023 created a licensing regime for fiat-backed stablecoins, and only licensed banks, registered money transfer agents and trust companies may issue them, as Decrypt noted in its coverage. The trust structure the megabanks describe fits inside that framework.

Political support has been building as well. CoinDesk reported that Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party said earlier this month that the state should promote yen-based stablecoins.

A small yen market next to a dollar giant

The scale of the opportunity, and the challenge, is clear from current market data. CoinDesk reported that Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC together account for about 84% of a stablecoin sector worth roughly $311 billion. Yen-pegged tokens make up less than $50 million of that total. JPYC, the most prominent yen stablecoin, has a market value of around $18 million, according to the same report.

Japan already has a handful of local efforts. JPYC Inc. launched what it describes as the first legally recognized yen stablecoin in October 2025. SBI Holdings and Startale Group unveiled a trust bank-backed yen token, JPYSC, in February 2026, and the Japan Blockchain Foundation said in May that it would issue a yen token on Japan Open Chain and Ethereum, according to Decrypt. On the dollar side, USDC became the first dollar-pegged stablecoin approved in Japan in March 2025, distributed through SBI.

None of those projects has the reach of MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC, which between them serve a large share of Japan’s corporate and retail customers. A token issued jointly by all three would arrive with a built-in distribution network that smaller issuers lack.

Why it matters for crypto readers

Most of the stablecoin market today is run by crypto-native firms and denominated in dollars. Banks have spent the past few years experimenting with tokenized deposits and private ledgers, but few have committed to a public timetable for live use of a stablecoin. A coordinated move by a country’s three biggest lenders is a different kind of signal.

For Japan, the project is also a question of monetary reach. If payments and settlement increasingly move onto blockchain networks, a credible yen token from trusted banks gives local businesses an alternative to settling in dollar stablecoins. For the crypto industry, a bank-issued token operating under clear rules could become a bridge between on-chain markets and the traditional financial system, depending on how open the banks make it.

There are still many unknowns. The banks have not said which network the token will use, whether it will be usable on public blockchains or only on permissioned systems, who will be allowed to hold it, or how redemption will work for non-bank users. Those choices will decide whether the coin becomes part of the wider crypto economy or stays inside corporate payment flows.

What comes next

The immediate step is administrative: the three banks say they will proceed with preparations to establish the council and continue studying the token. The harder deadline is the end of March 2027, by which point the banks have publicly committed to live commercial transactions. Between now and then, details on technology, governance and partner institutions should show how ambitious the project really is.