Mizuho Completes Blockchain Recordkeeping, Digital Currency Trials

Japanese banking group Mizuho announced today the completion of two new blockchain trials.

Conducted in partnership with professional services firm Cognizant, the tests saw the bank develop its own digital currency, as well as a system for sharing documents across national borders.

Mizuho first announced that it was developing a blockchain-based system for record-keeping in February of last year. The bank has also trialed prototypes for syndicated loan issuance, and is a member of the R3 distributed ledger consortium.

The second test involved Mizuho sending transactions, denominated in a newly created digital currency, between its subsidiaries. Mizuho explained that it sought to test “whether a business process as robust as the traditional centralized system can be built at a lower cost”.

According to statements, the bank said that both trials were successful, though it stopped short of saying whether it would push any of the solutions developed to commercial scale.

Mizuho went on to say:

“The solution successfully confirmed that a tamper-proof distributed database, one of the key features of blockchain technology, can be leveraged to create an effective platform for information sharing among multiple group companies, resulting in potential cost savings and enhanced usability.”

The bank indicated that it would continue to iterate on the projects it developed, particularly from the perspective of data storage, which it cited as a high priority for future tests.

“Addressing the need to store and manage large volumes of data using blockchain will be among the next objectives of the initiative,” the bank said.

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