Japan’s largest lender, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) announced on Tuesday the decision to shut down the blockchain-based online payments network, Global Open Network Japan that was developed in collaboration with Akamai Technologies.
The bank has already started the preparation of the stuttering and cited a tough environment in the payments space behind the move. “Slow growth of payment transaction numbers caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, made it difficult to develop its business on the scale originally anticipated,” the official press release stated.
Death of an Ambitious Project
MUFG and Akamai first announced their plans to form a joint venture in 2019 for the development of a blockchain payments system. However, the project faced delays before its launch in April 2021.
The Japanese bank owned 80 percent of the joint venture, and the rest was with Akamai.
One of the primary goals of the project was to provide a platform with high scalability and multi-connectivity data processing to meet the rising demand for the Internet of Things (IoT). In the shutdown notice, the bank pointed out that it struggled to fit its solution with the IoT growing market needs.
The joint venture, GO-NET Japan, is now coordinating with its clients and partners, and will eventually close all operations and then start the liquidation process. However, the Japanese bank highlighted that the shutdown of the project will not impact its financial results in the ongoing financial year.
Despite the shuttering of the project, MUFG is still bullish with plans of its other digital strategies and is discussing further collaboration with Akamai.
“MUFG is discussing further opportunities of collaboration with Akamai and seeking to drive momentum in open innovation through alliances with global business partners and by utilizing the latest technologies based on experience from the GO-NET project,” the lender added.
