MUFG Bank, Mizuho Bank, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have established a formal joint council to develop and co-issue a yen-backed crypto stablecoin by the end of Japan fiscal year 2026, March 2027.

The stablecoin will be issued under a trust agreement, with all three banks acting as joint settlors and a trust bank or similar institution serving as trustee. This is not a pilot. Three systemically important institutions have committed shared infrastructure.

The initiative operates under the FSA’s Payment Innovation Project and follows a late-2025 pilot examining whether multi-bank stablecoin co-issuance could be carried out, in the banks’ words, “legally and appropriately.”

The answer, evidently, was yes….