Fujitsu to trial blockchain payments with three Japanese banks
Trial will begin in January 2018
Fujitsu will work with Mizuho Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) to conduct a joint field trial of a person-to-person (P2P) money transfer service using blockchain.
The trial will begin in January 2018 and last for about three months. Fujitsu says it has already initiated development of the system.
For its test, Fujitsu will develop a cloud-based blockchain platform for money transfers between individuals that can be jointly used by these three banks, as well as a smartphone app that allows users to handle the different steps for sending money and for making deposits and withdrawals.
Fujitsu and the trio will verify that this system can link a money transfer account for individuals set up on this platform with the user’s actual bank account.
The trial will additionally confirm whether the new platform can “accurately and securely” handle a series of processes, including transferring value between money transfer accounts for individuals, as well as clearing and settlement.
Like many others, Fujitsu says through the trial it plans to develop a platform for users in an “increasingly monetarily diverse, cashless society”.
Hot moments
As with the three Japanese banks above, Fujitsu has shown plenty of interest in blockchain before.
In July, Fujitsu Laboratories said it had accelerated transaction processing for Hyperledger Fabric, one of the Hyperledger blockchain frameworks hosted by the Linux Foundation. Fujitsu said the processing of communications between applications and the blockchain platform, which had been the source of bottlenecks, was “more efficient”.
Last year, Mizuho Bank, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Laboratories jointly conducted a three-month operational trial using blockchain, which made it “practically impossible” to tamper with transaction histories.
