World’s Fourth Largest Bank is Testing its Own Cryptocurrency

Japan’s biggest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), is planning a new ‎cryptocurrency called MUFG Coin, which promises to create a borderless shopping ‎experience, according to local news outlet NHK.‎

The company is also said to be investigating other ways to leverage ‎the tokenized digital currency and its underlying blockchain technology ‎across its banking services.‎

The new coin is reportedly allowing the customer base to purchase goods and services ‎from “restaurants, convenience stores and other shops, as well as make transfers ‎to the accounts of other participants.” ‎

The move comes nearly one year after the banking giant ‎has joined the blockchain-based “utility settlement coin” (USC) project, ‎‎becoming one of the more noteworthy firms in the Asia-‎Pacific ‎region to hop on the cryptocurrency bandwagon.‎

Scheduled to go live in late 2018, the USC aims to help central banks ‎create their native cryptocurrencies by making it easier to ‎process and finalize transactions using collateralized assets on a custom-‎built blockchain.‎

The world’s fourth largest bank by assets, and the largest non-Chinese lender, is planning a ‎large-scale trial involving nearly 100,000 account holders.‎

Within that context, MUFG Securities, its securities subsidiary, has been working ‎more closely with Ripple’s interbank group Global Payments Steering Group ‎‎(GPSG). This collaboration intends to test moving real funds over RippleNet – Ripple’s enterprise blockchain network.‎

The new initiative will be exploring many different applications, and the exchange rate of one MUFG coin will be equal to one yen.‎

Like many other companies, MUFG is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology.‎ A similar attitude toward digital currencies has been ‎developing recently with many tech giants already ‎announcing trial runs of prototype cryptocurrencies, ‎which could serve as rivals to the likes of Bitcoin and ‎Ethereum.‎