Fnality International (Fnality), the company building the means of payments on-chain for tomorrow’s financial markets utilising the Utility Settlement Coin (USC), is pleased to announce that Mizuho Bank, the core group company of Mizuho Financial Group, one of the largest financial services group in Japan, has joined the original group of 14 founding shareholders working to deliver the collective goal to transform clearing and settlement processes, and support global exchange of value transactions; setting the standards for tomorrow’s tokenised infrastructure.

Since the close of the Series A funding round in June, Fnality has been working hard to build out corporate capabilities; including adding to the management team, engaging with the various central banks in order to establish local entities and with shareholders to ensure they will be ready to use the Fnality platform.

Significant progress has also been made building the technology stack and preparing the initial use cases that will use USC as a settlement asset.

Fumio Tajima, Executive Officer at Mizuho Bank commented, “We are delighted to join this strong group of founding shareholders. Mizuho is fully committed to being a driving force in change in financial services.” Adding, “We see that Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) offers huge potential and the use of USC as a settlement asset will be pivotal in enabling this change.

Rhomaios Ram, CEO of Fnality says “We are very pleased Mizuho have joined our shareholders so soon after the formation of the company.” Adding, “Having all three of Japan’s major banks involved in Fnality’s initial work to build out our foundations will help us ensure we make the best possible choices to help build tomorrow’s financial market infrastructure both in Japan and globally.”

Fnality was set up by a consortium of financial institutions. The founding shareholders comprise: Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC Group, Lloyds Banking Group, MUFG Bank, Nasdaq, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, State Street Corporation, and UBS.