AEON Financial Service (TYO:8570) and IBM Japan (NYSE: IBM) have announced that they are building a blockchain-based financial platform for the Asian market. The platform is expected to enable enhanced settlement and transactions for both consumers and enterprises in Japan and throughout Asia, including cryptocurrency payments between individuals and businesses, loyalty points allocation and redemption, and transaction data management.

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AEON Financial Service, a group of the largest retail companies in Japan, provides a range of financial services including banking, credit and micro-finance to customers in Japan and 11 other countries across Asia.

“Based on settlements and transactions, AEON Financial Service is working to build a platform that will offer various financial services such as virtual currency payments and loyalty points exchange and redemption not only to customers in Japan but also throughout Asia,” said Masaaki Mangetsu, Managing Director, Global Business Strategy, Aeon Financial Service. “We foresee great opportunities in using blockchain to build this platform, and will aim to use it to improve our current financial services offerings, as well as offering new services to underserved customers in Asian countries.”

“As an innovative technology, blockchain has the potential to revolutionize ways businesses work together with their ecosystem partners. The technology establishes accountability and transparency while streamlining business processes,” said Yoshiki Minowa, Vice President, Partner – Cognitive Process Transformation, Global Business Services, IBM Japan. “We are delighted to work with AEON Financial Service to build up a new blockchain-based platform for innovations.”

The trial will be conducted on Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain framework and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by The Linux Foundation.