Japan's Financial Services Agency has published guidance confirming that tokenised bank deposits remain deposits for regulatory purposes, subject to the same capital, insurance and reporting rules as the balances they represent.
The document is short and its scope is deliberately narrow. It does not extend to non-bank stablecoin issuers, who remain under the existing payment instrument framework.
Two of the three megabanks have pilots in production for corporate settlement. Both told this newsroom the guidance removes the main legal ambiguity blocking a wider rollout to business customers.
The consumer case remains unproven. Domestic instant payments already settle in seconds at negligible cost, which limits what a deposit token adds for retail users.
Quotations from the guidance in this article are our translation of the Japanese original; the paragraph references are included in our published notes.
