Report: JCB Developing Blockchain B2B Payment Product

JCB, a Japanese card provider, is developing a blockchain B2B payment offering specifically for netting trades between two parties. JCB is teaming with LayerX, a local company, on the offering, Ledger Insights reported.

Most companies have a one-way partner relationship, but firms that have two-way trade encompass commodity traders, investment companies and maybe the big Japanese firms. Not many particulars of the effort were available, according to the report.

In December 2019, Paystand entered into an initial partnership with JCB to provide an end-to-end online payments system for clients of JCB and large Japanese companies.

At the time, it was noted that the proposed offering takes on a sizable gap in Japan’s existing B2B payment space and that offers the corporate subset of JCB’s 130 million customers with another option aside from legacy payment methods.

Even though Japan’s B2B payments space accounts for $10 trillion in yearly volume, cash transactions are still in the lead as is the case in a number of markets. Just 1 percent of the country’s commercial payments are conducted by credit card as it stands, and an even lesser amount are made through technology such as bank transfers.

In May, JCB unveiled a partnership with TECHFUND, the tech upstart accelerator, to look into the idea of a payment infrastructure with blockchain options. TECHFUND isn’t a stranger to the blockchain space, having looked into assisting entrepreneurs with service token offerings previously.

More recently, Fujitsu Limited said it had built out the blockchain infrastructure at the heart of a newly announced pilot last year. Joining Fujitsu in testing real-life applications of the system are Mizuho Bank and JCB.

JCB is a significant player in the payments space in Japan, reporting 141.5 million cardholders and $321.6 billion in transactions last year. Fujitsu and JCB have been running a joint research effort on digital identity as of last year.