Japan’s MUFG To Issue Stablecoins On Progmat Coin Platform

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group hasn’t said which companies will be the first to use its platform. However, a few banks are said to have chosen a stablecoin option from a different company.

Megabank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) has announced that Japanese banks will soon use its “Progmat Coin” stablecoin issuance platform to start stablecoins tied to the Japanese yen on several public blockchains.

After new rules went into effect this month, Japanese banks have recently said they want to look into stablecoins or start making them.

Around the middle of 2022, the Japanese government passed a law that said non-banking companies couldn’t give out stablecoins. On June 1, 2023, the law was finally put into place.

In a statement on June 2, MUFG said that the Progmat Coin will be used to make it easier for bank-backed stablecoins to be issued on Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, and Cosmos. In the future, more networks will be added.

MUFG also said that its partners in blockchain technology and security, Toki and Datachain, are building a bridge that will allow cross-chain transactions, loans, and swaps between the blockchains that they support.

MUFG first announced Progmat Coin in February 2022, with the goal of making it a “universal digital asset payment method” that could be used for stablecoins, other crypto assets, and even a digital central bank currency based in Japan.

MUFG hasn’t said which banks will be the first to use Progmat Coin, but when it announced 2022, it told that it is working on starting its own stablecoin tied to the Japanese yen.

Nikkei Asia said on June 1 that Shikoku Bank, Tokyo Kiraboshi, and Minna Bank all plan to release stablecoins. It looks like they won’t use the Progmat Coin tool to do so, though.

The publication says that these banks will use a stablecoin platform made by a Tokyo-based company called G.U. Technologies.