The new year presents new opportunities for Factom as blockchain solutions gain traction in the APAC market. On December 22, we were selected as one of eight companies to participate in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s (TMG) Blockchain Business Camp accelerator program. This newly developed program is designed to attract foreign businesses with advanced blockchain technologies to Tokyo to further economic development. The program is part of Tokyo’s Action Plan 2020, seeking to make Tokyo a global financial and economic center in correlation with the upcoming major events such as the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This announcement provides a significant opportunity for Factom to continue establishing ourselves as a leader in enterprise level blockchain solutions on the international stage.

During the program, participants will explore business opportunities and growth in Tokyo through connecting with local enterprise companies, and networking events. Final presentations will be held on March 16, 2018. The Business Development Center Tokyo will offer follow-up support to help the participants deciding to establish business in Japan.

TMG selected Factom because of their ability to manage data securely and provide support to enterprise clients using Factom software. In particular, Factom Harmony reduces the costs for third party audits, due diligence and compliance reviews of data or documents in complex transactions. Ensuring the integrity of information exchanged allows companies to securely share, verify data, documents, and transactions between trading partners.

In May 2017, Wanxiang Group, a Chinese blockchain technology leader, announced the launch of WanCloud, a new blockchain ecosystem where open-source blockchain protocols are continually introduced, localized, and made available to developers and enterprise users in China. Part of Wanxiang’s goal is to further advance the Chinese blockchain ecosystem of developers, startups, and enterprises. Factom was supported by WanCloud’s infrastructure and is among the first blockchain protocols launched on the WanCloud platform. This experience gave us a model for how to expand into new markets such as Japan, in this case.

“With both of these announcements in Japan and China, Factom is poised to partner with major financial services firms in Asia. We are grateful for the opportunities, and look forward to working with these entities,” said Zeen Zhang, Factom’s China General Manager.