Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) announced that it has begun preparing to suspend the operations of Global Open Network Japan (GO-NET), which was jointly established by MUFG and Akamai Technologies in 2019.
The aim was to provide an open platform with high scalability and multi-connectivity data processing in response to the rise of IoT and has launched its primary business in April 2021.
However, in the payments business, the recent hard business environment, i.e. slow growth of payment transaction numbers caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors, made it difficult to develop its business on the scale originally anticipated.
In addition, in the IoT business, which GO-NET Japan had planned to expand in future, it struggled to find a fit to the growing market needs with its high scalability and multi-connectivity data processing blockchain, and commercialization of the product is expected to take longer than anticipated. As a result, the business is not expected to be able to achieve profitability in a reasonable timeframe, and it was concluded that it would be desirable to suspend its operations.
After coordinating with clients and partners, GO-NET Japan will suspend operations and liquidation procedures of GO-NET and GO-NET Japan will proceed thereafter. This matter is not expected to have any material impact on MUFG’s financial results for the current fiscal year.
MUFG will continue to accelerate digital transformation as a core strategy to achieve the goal of becoming a “leading business partner that pioneers the future with financial and digital capabilities.” MUFG is discussing further opportunities of collaboration with Akamai and seeking to drive momentum in open innovation through alliances with global business partners and by utilizing the latest technologies based on experience from the GO-NET project.
The closure comes on the heels of a separate announcement by MUFG on Progmat, a blockchain platform on which Japanese bank is planning to issue a stablecoin digital currency to enable instant settlement of security tokens.