Adoption of blockchain technology seems to be catching on considerably in many countries including Japan. Recently, it has been confirmed that a collaboration of five Japanese banks has been formed to create financial solutions based on blockchain like technology.
The collaborative effort will be called the “Fitting Hub” and it involves Bank of Iwate, Aomori Bank, Yamanashi Chuo Bank, Akita Bank and the Bank of Yokohama. It is expected that an electronic delivery service – the Fitting Hub’s very first service – will kick off in April of 2019.
More about the Fitting Hub
The partnership was first revealed sometime in 2018 as stories had it that an initial plan was expected to start testing the platform in July of 2018 and projected that it would be ready for complete adoption after twelve months.
The collaboration seeks to make several developments to the current financial framework and intends to employ some knowledge from IBM, to do this. IBM already has a bit of a reputation in the blockchain community as it developed and launched its own IBM Blockchain suite of services.
The official press release about the collaborative effort from the bank has it that (Google translation):
“With the electronic delivery service that will be launched this time, it is possible to receive and manage form data from multiple financial institutions and companies on one screen.”
Furthermore: “For financial institutions and business operators who provide services, such joint service provision can make the system inexpensive compared to separate systems, as well as greatly reduce postage and mailing costs.”
While the press release never actually mentions blockchain or cryptocurrency, it does provide statements that describe like technology.
When building such a collaborative system with the conventional database technology, not only a complicated mechanism is required but also separation control of data becomes a problem, but in this platform, by combining the distributed register technology and the data encryption technology , We are building a safe and low-cost system.
Banking and Blockchain in Japan
Many stakeholders in the Japanese banking industry seem to be doing a lot in adopting blockchain technology and cryptocurrency solutions in their operational framework. Recently, it was revealed that Mizuho plans to kick off its own cryptocurrency-like stablecoin dubbed J-Coin.
Similarly, Japan’s second biggest brokerage firm for securities – Daiwa -, has announced the completion of a test run process to offer after-trade solutions using blockchain technology.
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