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Welcome to the one hundred twenty-ninth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer.
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The Bank of Japan will hold its Monetary Policy Meeting on September 18 & 19, following the FOMC in the US. The consensus expectation is for the Bank to keep its policy rate on hold this time; beyond this meeting, the economists we follow diverge in their forecast for the next rate hike, with a range from October 2025 to January 2026.
The Presidential Election of the Liberal Democratic Party will be held as a “full-scale” election on October 4. A “full scale” election is typically held when the LDP President’s term expires, and includes one vote from each of the 295 current LDP Diet members, plus an equal amount of votes representing the preferences of local party members. Should a run-off vote be needed, the 295 current LDP Diet members will be joined by 47 prefectural votes only.
We would like to give a shoutout to the hidden heroes of Japan’s digital transformation. Following the launch of My Number Card functionality on iPhones in June 2025, the use of smartphones as digital health insurance cards will be iteratively rolled out starting September 19, 2025. As of July 2025, 79.2% of the population holds a My Number Card, and 86.6% of cardholders have registered it for health insurance use. In August 2025, approximately 17 million traditional National Health Insurance (NHI) cards across 1,400 municipalities expired, with the transition to new cards not throwing up significant issues. Since they have gotten to work, the Digital Agency has been doing a first-class job.
Here is what we are going to cover this week:
Venture Capital & Private Markets: Saison Capital has established a USD 50m blockchain-focused investment fund named Onigiri Capital, with secured commitments totaling USD 35m; Singapore’s GIC and Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund are considering selling their stakes in Vietnamese fintech firm VNLIFE; The real estate investment arm of Morgan Stanley has reached the final closing of a JPY 131 billion ($900 million) real estate fundInsurance: MS&AD Insurance Group’s subsidiaries — Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSI) and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance (ANDI) — have submitted their quarterly progress report on executing the business improvement plans mandated by Japan’s Financial Services AgencyBanking: Compliance Data Lab has announced the implementation of “Compliance Station® UBO” at West Japan City Bank; TOPPAN Edge was certified by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) as the first Japanese Qualified vLEI Issuer (QVI) in the verifiable Legal Entity Identifier (vLEI) ecosystemPayments: SBI Shinsei Bank is preparing to launch a digital currency for its corporate clients, using DeCurret’s “DCJPY”, and joining the J.P. Morgan-initiated Partior network; Nudge will begin accepting credit card bill payments in the stablecoin “JPYC”; the Deutsche Bundesbank Representative Office, jointly with Japan’s Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan, held an event titled “CBDC Insights: Digital Euro and Japan’s ApproachCapital Markets: the total net assets of Money Reserve Funds (MRFs), which serve as a pool of idle money invested in highly safe assets like short-term public and corporate bonds, have recently surpassed JPY16 tn to reach a record high; Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Holdings has launched its new subsidiary, MUFG Securities (India) Private LimitedAsset Management: Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management has introduced Bloomberg’s BQuant EnterpriseDigital Assets: SBI Digital Markets (SBIDM), Samara Alpha Asset Management (Samara Alpha), and Bracket Labs Group (Bracket) have forged a strategic alliance with the objective of reshaping the tokenized securities market; Zodia Custody, the institutional digital asset custodian backed by Standard Chartered, and Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings have mutually agreed to terminate their much-anticipated joint venture, “SBI Zodia Custody”The Last Word: UOB — Q4/2025 Forecast for Japan
AloJapan.com