Akamai Technologies and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) have formed a joint venture (JV) for the launch of an online payment network that will be powered by blockchain technology.
Dubbed Global Open Network (GO-NET), the new proposition will support existing payment processing functions, pay-per-use, and micropayments.
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It will also facilitate other developing IoT-enabled payments.
MUFG group CDTO and GO-NET CEO Hironori Kamezawa said: “Our goal is to enable rapid innovation in digital payment services, leveraging a transformative platform, with built-in security, hyper-scale and efficiencies.
“GO-NET aims to expand the payment network business to a global scale, and enhance the services to support diverse payment ideas in the upcoming IoT era.”
The initiative followed a three-year alliance between the two parties.
The network is expected to be rolled out in the first half of next year in Japan.
Akamai CEO and co-founder Tom Leighton said: “The collaboration between MUFG and Akamai over the last three years has demonstrated what is possible when industry leaders join forces to solve a challenging problem.
“Akamai and MUFG are committed to delivering innovative solutions at a level of security, scale and responsiveness never before achieved.”
A trial of the platform revealed a capacity to process more than one million transactions per second and finalise transactions in less than two seconds.
