Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (UFG) Plans For Everyday Stablecoin Uses To Come To Life

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (UFG) – World's Fifth Largest Bank To Put A Stablecoin To Practical Uses

Having gained a strong professional reputation as a strong performing force in the world of Banking and financial services, the Japan-based company Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) will be putting its own iteration of a Stablecoin (the MUFG Coin) to direct practical use later this year.

Being known as the fifth largest bank in the world as of this year, the institution has since announced that it will be doing so according to news reports from April 9th, 2019.

The news itself was revealed by the now new president of the MUFG – President Kanetsugu Mike over the course of an interview with Asahi Shimbun, according to various news sources.

Along with being the 5th largest financial institution in the world, the MUFG is the single largest company based in Japan and is poised to become the single largest, and first, a bank based in Japan to issue a digital currency, specifically when it comes to a stablecoin based against the Japanese yen.

The stablecoin itself is focused on supporting the underlying currency functionality, with users capable of downloading an app which will be able to immediately convert specific bank deposits into the designated Stablecoin.

So how has this new stablecoin been received by users? According to the Cointelegraph Japan, more than 1,500 employees of the company have since announced participation in the use of the MUFG Coin since its initial release in 2017.

“I would like to offer unprecedented new value,” Kanetsugu Mike reportedly told Asahi Shimbun.

According to reports from back in May 2018, the MUFG has since revealed that it intends to test out the stablecoin in terms of application as well as scalability by working with as many as 100,000 account holders back in 2019.

While the MUFG has been relatively vague in disclosing the phasing across this testing period, as well as practical implementation over the course of 2019, with the president not providing much more than the intention of stress-testing the system. The MUFG has stated that it intends this stablecoin to allow users to “use the currency to make payments at places like restaurants, convenience stores, and other shops,” as well as to “transfer the currency to other participants’ accounts.”

Over the course of December 2018, MUFG was followed up by the fellow large-scale Japan-based banking organization – Mizuho Financial Group – which had since announced its own intentions to create and launch a bespoke digital currency, purpose-built for peer to peer payments as well as remittances.

While this Stablecoin was initially scheduled for a launch on March 1st, Mizuho's ‘J-Coin' has yet to be released, nor have additional details been provided by the organization as of yet. The ‘J-Coin' will reportedly seek to link its existing bank accounts with accompanying associated digital wallets.

The initiative, while started with the support of over 60 supporting financial institutions, will work together in order to host a total of 56 million user accounts.

When it comes to financial institutions in Japan, the country itself serves as an innovative nation when it comes to e-payments. Such innovators have included the e-commerce giant known as Rakuten, which will go on to launch its own dedicated crypto exchange, as well as a chat app provider called Line. Line, which has also been responsible for the launch of its own cryptocurrency and dedicated blockchain.