According to reports out earlier this week, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) the biggest bank in Japan have announced that they will be launching their own Blockchain based payment network in just over a years time, during the first six months of 2020.

MUFG are a huge bank, by assets they are the fifth biggest bank in the world, therefore the scale of an MUFG led blockchain payment service would be huge - this is a really exciting bit of news.

Global Open Network

The network has been named the ‘Global Open Network’ and will use blockchain technology to process over one million transactions a second. This will be a very scalable, high powered blockchain network, though as it stands, we can’t yet see which blockchain this will be based on, therefore we can only assume that MUFG are building this from scratch, unless there are some hidden partnerships that we aren’t yet aware of.

Global Open network will provide a huge number of services such as live payment processing, micropayments and other Internet-of-Things based technologies.

According to Coindesk:

“Previously, MUFG has been exploring blockchain tech for several uses cases. Back in November, the firm participated in a pilot that put a syndicated loan for $150 million on the blockchain, along with Spanish banking giant BBVA and France’s BNP Paribas. In December 2017, the group launched a blockchain proof-of-concept with tech firm NTT for improving cross-border trades. The firm was also looking to develop its own digital currency named MUFG coin as part of its research into blockchain back in 2016.”

Blockchain technology is huge in Japan, as is cryptocurrency, therefore it’s hardly a surprise that MUFG have been exploring blockchain technology in partnership with other firms for some time now.

What are the implications of this

So, MUFG could be about to adopt cryptocurrency payments, indeed, this would make sense if they are in the process of building their very own blockchain. What’s more likely however is that this will be a platform designed to facilitate FIAT payments and transactions, with the view to expand further into crypto once cryptocurrencies become more accepted by the mainstream. Or, perhaps MUFG are trying to start a revolution here?