Central Bank of Japan promises to return to the issue of issuing a digital yen in 2026

The Bank of Japan has decided to resume studying the digital yen project in 2023 in cooperation with the country’s three largest commercial banks.

The Central Bank of Japan (BoJ) has announced that the pilot project will be aimed at conducting demonstration experiments on issuing Japan’s national digital currency.

It is expected that at various stages of testing, the central bank will involve third-party financial institutions and banks to identify problems, as well as resolve issues of client deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts. Additionally, the pilot project program includes testing of offline functionality focused on payments without the Internet.

In August, the Bank of Japan officially announced the termination of work on its own digital currency project due to a lack of interest from the public. Like many other central banks in the world, BoJ has been conducting events for several years to explore the potential of digital currency and the features of the CBDC retail ecosystem.

A number of financial industry experts expressed the opinion that the resumption of CBDC research by the Central Bank of Japan and the attraction of new participants to them is caused by the regulator’s desire to avoid the consequences of a possible technological lag.