The Japanese government and the Bank of Japan intend to develop a blockchain platform to support the real time 24/7 settlement of government bond and stock transactions using a wholesale CBDC, the Nikkei reported. Assuming it proceeds, the goal is to finalize plans in early 2027 with a view to launching in the early 2030s.
To that end, a new working group is being formed involving the Bank of Japan, the Financial Services Agency, the Ministry of Finance and financial institutions. Together they will select the technology, decide on the split of work between the agencies and private sector as well as the work processes.
A key driver is a concern about lagging internationally. There is some irony here, as the central bank was one of the earliest to seriously explore CBDC, although much of its work has been on retail CBDC. I does not currently intend to launch one. Earlier this year the focus shifted to wholesale CBDC, but rather than securities settlement, the initial purpose was to enable interbank settlement of tokenized deposits. This may have been driven by the BOJ’s participation in Project Agorá, the BIS cross border payment initiative involving eight central banks and more than 40 global institutions.
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