Japan CBDC tests hit 50K TPS, but digital yen still distant

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TL;DR: The Bank of Japan’s latest CBDC progress report shows its pilot system handling a mixed load of 50,000 transactions per second in testing, with no “technical knockout factor” found that would block a real-world rollout. But the central bank still has not decided whether to issue a digital yen, and the more telling change may be organizational: its CBDC Forum is being restructured to fold stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and DLT into the discussion, just as private yen stablecoins like JPYC move from pilots to payrolls.

Key Takeaways

• The Bank of Japan’s pilot CBDC system processed 50,000 TPS in a mixed workload test (10,000 payments plus 40,000 balance inquiries).
• A “record splitting” technique lifted throughput on a single busy account from around 50-100 TPS to 6,000 TPS.
• The central bank says it found no fatal technical barrier to social implementation, while admitting a production system would be far harder to build than the pilot.
• The CBDC Forum’s seven working groups are being merged into three, with one group dedicated to stablecoins, tokenized deposits, DLT, and asset tokenization.
• There is still no decision or timeline on whether Japan will actually issue a digital yen.

Japan’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot hits 50,000 transactions a second in tests, but a digital yen is still nowhere.

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has released its latest progress report on its CBDC pilot program, and it’s all about throughput: 50,000 transactions per second (TPS). The BoJ’s experimental system handled a mixed workload during testing, combining 10,000 payment transactions with 40,000 balance inquiries that hit the database simultaneously.

The report, compiled by the Bank’s Payment and Settlement Systems Department and published on September 11, 2026, covered work done since the previous progress report in May 2025. Japan’s CBDC pilot has been running since April 2023, after two years of proofs of concept (PoC), but it remains exactly that: a pilot.

The BoJ repeated its line that whether to issue a CBDC “should be made through public discussions,” and offered no timeline for a decision. Back in December 2023, a BoJ-convened panel of academics and industry representatives urged the country to introduce a digital yen “without delay.” Nearly three years later, though, its ETA is still uncertain.

What sets this report apart from those of years past is that it actually contains results. Earlier updates told readers which issues had been discussed and what tests were planned, and little else. This one has measured numbers.

Stress testing the plumbing

The more interesting results are in the performance section. One known headache for any national payment system is what the BoJ called “single-account concentration”—the moment when a huge number of users all pay the same store at once, and every transaction queues up to update one account balance. Without special handling, the pilot system managed only around 50-100 TPS per account before record locking choked it.

The central bank’s countermeasure was “record splitting,” or breaking an account balance into multiple database records so credits and debits can be processed in parallel. With splitting properly tuned, throughput on a single account rose to 6,000 TPS, and desktop analysis suggested splitting each account into 600 records could reach 18,500 TPS. There is a catch: split too aggressively and performance drops again, so the real system would need to adjust the split count as transaction volumes change.

Based on these tests, the BoJ is tentatively designing against a social-implementation target of 500,000 TPS in total, with 100,000 of those being actual payment transactions. It concludes that “no technical knockout factor (fatal and insoluble factor)” was found for scaling to that level.

That last sentence will no doubt raise some CoinGeek readers’ eyebrows, given BSV blockchain‘s multiple demonstrations of unbounded on-chain scalability from times that predate even the BoJ’s pilot program.

A production CBDC system, the BoJ admitted, would be significantly harder to build than the pilot: it proposed multiple distributed ledgers that must stay consistent, error-handling that complicates process flow, backup sites for disasters, and endpoint devices for everyone from smartphone owners to the cash-only crowd. The central bank’s own chart of the problem showed technical difficulty climbing off the scale as volumes rise past 100,000 TPS.

A familiar number

Another point worth repeating is: a central bank announcing that its bespoke, centralized test system can handle 50,000 TPS, and that 500,000 might be possible with enough servers, is having the same conversation the blockchain world had years ago.

BSV blockchain’s Teranode software, publicly released in 2025, has sustained over 1 million TPS for two weeks straight on a globally distributed test network of competing nodes, a result documented in detail by AWS, whose infrastructure hosted the test. That is double the BoJ’s tentative target for a fully deployed digital yen, running today, on a public blockchain, with fees low enough that the balance-inquiry side of the equation barely registers as a cost at all.

Central banks often assume a CBDC must be built on private, permissioned infrastructure, and there are institutional reasons they might prefer it that way. But as the BoJ’s own report shows, the hard parts of the problem, e.g., throughput, consistency, availability, are precisely the parts a scalable public blockchain has already solved on open networks. A central bank looking for an efficient base layer for a CBDC doesn’t have to build it from scratch. It just has to be willing to use one it doesn’t fully control, and so far, no-one is.

The forum tells the real story

Buried deeper in the report is arguably the bigger news. The BoJ’s CBDC Forum, its discussion channel with 64 private-sector firms, is being reorganized. The seven working groups that have met 84 times since 2023 are being merged into three “discussion groups”: CBDC architecture, the CBDC ecosystem, and new technologies.

It’s the new technologies group that stands out. Its agenda covers stablecoins, tokenized deposits, DLT-related technologies, asset tokenization, and programmability. The BoJ also notes the restructured forum will run “with a focus on initiatives that also contribute to the Bank’s efforts related to wholesale payment systems.”

The timing isn’t accidental. While the pilot program was running stress tests, Japan’s private digital money sector started shipping. JPYC, the country’s first regulated yen-denominated stablecoin, launched in October 2025 and is already being used for payroll by a logistics firm paying some 2,300 delivery drivers. In August, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) scrapped the 1 million yen per-transaction cap on stablecoin operators and set up a dedicated stablecoin division. And in June, the ruling LDP’s own blockchain panel urged the government to promote yen stablecoins for settlement across Asia.

None of that means the digital yen is dead (so far). But a central bank that folds stablecoins into its CBDC and starts talking about wholesale payments may be hedging against the possibility that the private sector will serve the retail market first. It also faces the same question CoinGeek raised in previous articles about this story: Even if a digital yen launches, why would anyone use it? An asset that simply runs alongside the existing currency risks being a novelty token, especially in a country where tap-and-pay apps like PayPay are everywhere, yet gift envelopes of crisp paper bills refuse to die.

For now, the BoJ’s CBDC pilot grinds on. The central bank says its next technical focus is the ledger management system at the core of the design. The next progress report will arrive in due course and will likely contain further statements that the technology works, and no decision has been made. If countries are indeed eager to reach the end of their pilot programs, better lobbying efforts might be in order.

FAQs

What is the Bank of Japan’s CBDC pilot program?

It’s an experimental program that has been running since April 2023, in which the Bank of Japan tests a prototype digital yen system and discusses design issues with private businesses through its CBDC Forum. It follows two years of earlier proofs of concept.

How fast is the Bank of Japan’s test CBDC system?

In the latest tests, the pilot system processed a mixed workload of 50,000 transactions per second, combining 10,000 payment transactions and 40,000 balance inquiries. Using a technique called record splitting, a single heavily used account could handle 6,000 TPS, up from 50-100 TPS without it.

Has Japan decided to issue a digital yen?

No. The Bank of Japan says the decision “should be made through public discussions” and has given no timeline. The latest report says no fatal technical barrier was found, but a production system would be much harder to build than the pilot.

What changed in the Bank of Japan’s CBDC Forum?

The forum’s seven working groups are being merged into three discussion groups covering CBDC architecture, the CBDC ecosystem, and new technologies. The new technologies group’s agenda includes stablecoins, tokenized deposits, DLT, asset tokenization, and programmability.

How does the Bank of Japan’s target compare to public blockchains?

The Bank is tentatively designing for 500,000 TPS at full deployment. BSV’s Teranode software has already sustained over one million TPS for two weeks on a globally distributed test network, roughly double the Bank’s target.

What is JPYC?

JPYC is Japan’s first regulated yen-pegged stablecoin, launched in October 2025 and backed by yen deposits and Japanese government bonds. It has moved from pilots to real use, including payroll for around 2,300 delivery drivers.

Watch: CBDC applications beyond digital money