Japan's Financial Services Agency has scheduled the first meeting of a new cross-agency forum for September 30, 2026, aimed at reworking the country's payment infrastructure for an economy where AI agents, not just humans, strike deals. Called the Forum for On-chain Finance in the AI Era, the group brings together the FSA and other ministries and agencies under an initiative first set out in the FSA's growth-investment financial strategy of July 21, 2026.
The agency's rationale is blunt. In an era of what it calls "agentic commerce," AI agents will transact around the clock across languages and time zones, so payment systems need to run 24 hours a day, link programmatically with logistics and commerce data, and offer the stability of a trusted settlement layer. If Japan's payment rails cannot meet that bar, the FSA warns, dependence on overseas payment infrastructure will deepen, weakening the country's competitiveness and raising economic-security risk. Its proposed answer is a mix of blockchain-based "on-chain finance" and the existing offchain financial system, rather than a wholesale replacement of one by the other.
The forum's work is split across three tracks.
| Track | Focus |
|---|---|
| Social implementation of on-chain finance | Public-private roadmap, expanded Payment Improvement Project, new payment systems, cross-border stablecoin interoperability talks, an Asia payments dialogue, and on-chain handling of Bank of Japan current-account deposits |
| Environment building | Review of stablecoin reserve-asset rules, risk-reduction measures for decentralized exchanges, decentralized finance and wallet providers, and a framework for tokenizing a range of assets |
| AI and quantum adaptation | Supervision approach as AI spreads through markets and institutions, identity-verification infrastructure such as verifiable credentials, and quantum-computing risk to blockchain cryptography |
On payments, the FSA wants a public-private roadmap for on-chain finance, continued expansion of its Payment Improvement Project into new use cases including trade settlement, and international coordination on reserve and redemption rules so yen-denominated stablecoins can work alongside stablecoins issued in other currencies. A new Asia-focused public-private dialogue on cross-border payments is also part of the plan. Separately, the growth strategy calls on the Bank of Japan to compile, by the end of the year, its thinking on how to handle its own current-account deposits on-chain and a path toward implementation.
Two dedicated study groups will handle the harder regulatory questions: one on stablecoin reserve-asset rules, decentralized exchanges and decentralized finance, wallet-provider risk, and the tokenization of a range of assets; the other on how markets and financial institutions should be supervised as AI use spreads, on identity-verification tools such as verifiable credentials, and on the risk that quantum computing could eventually break blockchain cryptography. The Ministry of Finance is separately weighing whether investors could receive government-bond principal and interest payments on-chain, and the Digital Agency is examining whether stablecoins or tokenized deposits could be used to disburse public benefits.
The FSA wants an interim summary of the forum's work by early 2027 and is separately considering expanding its own organization so it can take a lead role, alongside other ministries, in shaping rules for private payment settlement generally. The opening session is scheduled to take place in a shared conference room at the Central Government Building No. 7 in Tokyo and will be closed to public observers; the agency said a summary of proceedings would be published on its website afterward. The substantive debate, on stablecoin reserves, DeFi oversight and how much of Japan's settlement system moves on-chain, is still to come.