Akamai, MUFG roll out blockchain-based payments network

Cloud delivery network provider Akamai Technologies on Tuesday announced its partnership with Japan-based Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) to introduce a new blockchain-based online payment network for next-generation payment transactions.

With Akamai's intelligent platform, MUFG aims to offer a new payment network expected to be available in Japan during the first half of 2020 with support for current payment processing, pay-per-use, micropayments and other developing Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled payment transactions, Akamai said in a statement.

"This new blockchain-based online payment system, built upon our Cloud platform, will be designed to address the concerns related to scalability, latency and security that have to date hindered broader use of blockchain," said Tom Leighton, CEO and co-founder of Akamai.

At latencies of less than two seconds per transaction, the new technology is expected to be capable of processing more than one million transactions per second, executed across the payment network by Akamai's cloud offerings.

"We have high expectations for our partnership with Akamai to provide customers the ability to support significantly greater volumes of high-speed payment transactions without compromising the level of security required for payment networks," added Nobuyuki Hirano, President and Group CEO of MUFG.

The technology is expected to provide material cost efficiencies and security to support digital payments at large scales.

--IANS

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