Japan’s Financial Services Agency has approved its fourth stablecoin pilot under the Payment Innovation Project, adding cross-border trade finance to the areas regulators have cleared for stablecoin settlement. The latest program, announced on September 29, 2026, brings back participants from earlier projects including the country’s three megabanks: Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, with Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking also joining.
The pilot is built around TradeWaltz, a Software as a Service platform that digitizes international trade paperwork, alongside NTT Data and four lenders. The goal is to let exporters collect money faster while allowing banks to automate payment instructions and receipt confirmation. Under the TradeWaltz-led program, stablecoin payments are triggered after an exporter uploads shipping documents and the bank signs off on buying the resulting export receivable. For now, the receivable purchase and settlement between an exporter and its bank is the only part of the trade chain open to participants, though expansion to importers and their banks could follow.
This is the fourth approval in the Payment Innovation Project and the fifteenth overall since the FSA launched its FinTech Proof-of-Concept Hub in 2017. The first PIP project in November 2025 was based on the three megabanks’ plan to issue a payments stablecoin together. The second pilot, announced in February 2026, involved Nomura and Daiwa testing blockchain securities transfers settled in stablecoin. The third, in April 2026, was run by DeCurret DCP and GMO Aozora Net Bank for tokenized deposit interbank settlement.
The participating megabanks hold a combined $6.8 trillion in assets. TradeWaltz confirmed that the financial institutions will examine the settlement token together, pointing back to the joint trust-backed yen stablecoin the three lenders are already building under PIP’s first project. That stablecoin is expected to be ready for live commercial transactions during the fiscal year ending in March 2027.
The FSA did not set an end date, saying only that the trial runs from September 2026 for the time being. Participants outlined a longer roadmap including electronic bills of lading and smart-contract escrow services, aimed at moving more of the trade workflow on-chain. The pilot also aligns with Japan’s broader approach toward digital assets: as of August 2026, the FSA has a dedicated Crypto Assets and Stablecoins Division as part of a plan to reclassify crypto as a financial product and cut the top tax rate.
