Japan's largest bank is launching a payment network built on the blockchain in 2020

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), the largest bank in Japan and the fifth largest in the world measured by total assets, announced Tuesday that it is establishing a joint venture with Akamai to launch an open payment network in Japan based on the blockchain. MUFG said that the payment network that is expected to be able to process over a million transactions per second "will strive to support diverse payment schemes that take IoT into account, to expand [MUFG's] payment network business globally and to further enhance [MUFG's] services."

The launch is expected in the first half of 2020.