Japan’s largest financial conglomerate, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) has postponed the launch of its Blockchain -based Payments network until 2021, Coindesk reported on Friday.
The Japanese bank tied with US tech company, Akamai Technologies, forming a joint venture called Global Open Network (GO-NET), for the launch of the decentralized payments network. Initially, the two partners were aiming to roll-out the online payments network in the first half of this year.
Though the initial launch is now planned for 2021, the bank is aiming to fully launch the new payment services across Japan by the summer of 2022.
GO-NET claimed before that its blockchain network will be able to handle 10 million transactions per second, but at the initial launch, it can only process 100,000 transactions per second. That number is significantly larger than Visa’s capability of processing 70,000 transactions per second.
Although the two companies officially announced their partnership last year, they have been developing payment technologies since 2016.
Decentralizing Payments
GO-NET was formed in 2018, with the Japanese bank owning an 80 percent stake in it.
MUFG is leveraging its existing financial services network to increase the adaptation of the upcoming decentralized payments system, while the US partner is responsible for setting up the network’s global infrastructure.
The crypto-focussed publication detailed that GO-NET has already established 280,000 servers in 136 countries around the world and will also offer its own digital currency wallet.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan is planning to test-launch the digital yen in the next financial year. Additionally, over 30 private Japanese companies and banks formed a group recently to experiment with a private digital yen.
