MUFG to roll out blockchain-powered payments platform

The platform can process a million transactions per second.

Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) has tied up with US cloud software firm Akamai to develop a blockchain service with the capacity to process a million transactions per second and finalise transactions in less than two seconds. 

“MUFG and Akamai, using Akamai’s globally deployed high-speed and high-security platform, will utilize this new blockchain’s high-speed processing and secure value transfer abilities to promote pay-per-use, micropayments, and other new IoT generation payment methods,” the bank said in a statement.

The blockchain will be built on Akamai’s cloud service, Akamai Intelligent Platform. The bank targets the global payment network service to be available by 2019 or early 2020.

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Japanese banks have been turning to digital methods to cut costs as they are faced with dwindling loan demand brought about by a rapidly shrinking population. MUFG is also planning to cut branches by 20% over a six year period to be replaced by self-service branches to optimise efficiency and bring operating costs down.