Japan And China Allies With Blockchain

Asia's top economies are seeking to invest in blockchain to hasten and secure financial transactions in the region.

Blockchain appears to be gaining more confidence in its application as Japan’s biggest bank is poised to adopt the technology in its transactions. China, on the other hand, urges faster development of blockchain to speed up its commercialization.

Japan’s largest bank switches to Blockchain

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) worked with Akamai in the past year and a half to develop a new blockchain that will handle their payments. According to reports, Akamai (a US tech company) and MUFG co-developed a new blockchain not only to help speed up but also bring down the cost of payments.

Fortune notes that the technology is expected to handle “1 million transactions per second at latencies of less than 2 seconds.” In the future, the companies expect that their service can handle up to 10 million transactions per second, provided of the expected improvements along the way.

Bitcoin, which is the original cryptocurrency from the world’s first blockchain, can accommodate as many as seven transactions per second with the latencies going beyond 10 minutes.  MUFG and Akamai’s blockchain is “permissioned.” This means that computers can only join the network in charge of ordering and confirming payments once they have been verified.

“For years, the financial industry has sought to utilize blockchain to secure and hasten transaction processing, and lower associated costs,” said Nobuyuki Hirano, president and group CEO of MUFG.

According to him, the new technology can “support significantly greater volumes of high-speed payment transactions without compromising the level of security required to combat fraudulent transactions.”

China going all out for Blockchain

For its part, the State Council of China wants government-funded research centers and local financial authorities to invest more on blockchain development in order to speed up its commercialization.

According to the statement issued by the State Council of China:

“To build a regional equity market in Guangdong, according to the opening up of the capital market, timely introduction of Hong Kong, Macao and international investment institutions to participate in transactions. We will vigorously develop financial technology and accelerate the research and application of blockchain and big data technologies under the premise of legal compliance.”

It is interesting to note that this year alone, the Chinese government has expressed a pro-blockchain stance, according to CCN. In fact, the government has reportedly been funding multi-billion dollar initiatives for the development of the technology across different networks.

Along with this line, Pearl Pay firmly believes in the power of blockchain technology. That’s why the company is bringing an ecosystem of products and technologies based on blockchain to help the Philippines transact payments faster, more conveniently and securely. To know more about what Pearl Pay will be offering the Philippines, visit www.pearlpay.io.

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