The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, the banking unit of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), has joined Ripple, which is making efforts to set up an international blockchain payments network of global banks. MUFG said it is joining Ripple’s ‘Global Payments Steering Group’ (GPSG), which was set up in September 2016 to create a ‘rules-based blockchain payments network’. The goal of the Ripple-led banking collective is to create uniform policies and governance to facilitate the transfer of money, globally, over a blockchain. The steering group was founded with six banks from three continents – Bank of America Merill Lynch and Royal Bank of Canada from North America, European banks Santander, UniCredit and Standard Chartered, and Australian banking institution Westpac Banking Corp. MUFG’s entry into the group makes it the first Asian bank to participate in the interbank group where members will oversee the creation and maintenance of payment transaction rules and formalized standards for money transfers using the Ripple blockchain. Ripple claims some 90 banks around the world could participate in the international payment network.
