MUFG Bank has chosen Zerobank Design Factory (ZDF), a subsidiary of Fukuoka Financial Group, to provide the core banking system for its newly established digital bank.
According to Minna Bank, itself fully owned by Fukuoka Financial Group, the technology involved is a full cloud-based banking system that ZDF developed and operates, and which runs on Google Cloud.
In 2022, ZDF announced its plans to offer the system to both local and global financial institutions, as well as non-financial entities seeking to launch banking services.
This marks the first instance of ZDF extending the system to external organizations.
Looking ahead, ZDF aims to address the challenges faced by companies entering the banking industry and other sectors through the provision of the system, thereby contributing to the growth and innovation of the digital banking market both domestically and globally.
Launched in May 2021 as Japan’s first digital bank, Minna Bank now serves 1.3 million accounts and many customers nationwide. Minna Bank has been advancing three businesses: the B2C business providing financial services to individuals, the B2B2X business offering financial functions and services to partner companies via API, and the banking system provision business.
“Since its inception, the bank has accumulated and updated its technologies and expertise related to systems, functionalities, and design required for a digital bank,” said Kenichi Nagayoshi, president and CEO of ZDF and Minna Bank.
“As a result, we believe that the recent first external provision of our system marks a valuable milestone,” said Nagayoshi. “Moving forward, we hope to contribute, even if just a little, to the development of the digital banking market both domestically and internationally through the provision of this system.”
Toby Brown, global managing director of regulated industries at Google Cloud, said their collaboration with Minna Bank proves that cloud-based technology can deliver flexibility, speed, and reliability for core systems within global banks.
“Minna Bank’s use of Google Cloud’s advanced technologies—like Google Kubernetes Engine for elastic scale, Spanner for global data consistency, and Vertex AI for intelligent insights—is a blueprint for accelerating digital transformation far beyond banking, enabling industries from retail to mobility to seamlessly embed financial services and create new value for their customers,” said Brown.
