Stablecoin issuer Circle and Japan's largest investment bank Nomura are reportedly partnering to enable instant foreign exchange settlement for Japanese companies using stablecoins, with a launch target as early as 2027. Nikkei reported on the partnership on June 25, 2026, citing plans to let companies convert yen into dollar-denominated stablecoins for cross-border transactions with instant settlement.
The service is designed to eliminate the delays caused by banking hours and time zone differences that currently slow international payments — replacing them with blockchain-based settlement that settles 24/7. USDC, Circle's dollar-backed stablecoin with a market capitalization of $73.8 billion per CoinMarketCap data, would be the primary instrument.
Japan's Stablecoin Moment
The Circle-Nomura partnership sits inside a broader wave of stablecoin development in Japan. On the same day as the Nikkei report, SBI Holdings and Startale Group announced JPYSC — a trust bank-backed yen stablecoin designed for institutional and cross-border settlement. Japan's Payment Services Act has allowed banks, trust companies, and licensed money transfer providers to issue regulated stablecoin tokens, giving the country one of the more established legal frameworks for digital money globally.
Regulators are also moving to shift digital assets from the Payment Services Act into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act — a change that would bring crypto closer to traditional securities regulation. Separately, proposed tax reforms would reduce capital gains tax on crypto from the current 55% to a flat 20% rate, a significant structural change that would affect corporate treasury decisions.
What Instant FX Settlement Changes
Conventional corporate FX settlement involves multiple correspondent banking intermediaries, exposure to SWIFT cutoff times, and value dating delays of 1–2 business days. Stablecoin-based FX compresses that to seconds — and operates across weekends and holidays when bank rails are closed.
For Japanese exporters and importers, which frequently deal in USD/JPY flows at significant volume, the efficiency gain from real-time settlement is material. The partnership also reduces counterparty exposure by moving settlement off interbank rails onto blockchain infrastructure where finality is programmable.
Circle's USDC is already integrated into a range of institutional payment corridors. Bringing Nomura's distribution network — one of Japan's most established institutional client rosters — to stablecoin settlement is a qualitatively different kind of adoption than retail-facing wallet apps.
XRPL Context
Japan is also one of the active markets for XRPL-based stablecoin infrastructure. Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin is live on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum, and is growing as a settlement instrument. Bitso's MXNB peso stablecoin launched on XRPL in June 2026 for US-Mexico corridor payments — illustrating the same corporate FX-replacement thesis the Circle-Nomura partnership targets, applied to a different currency pair.
For context on how Ripple's infrastructure competes in the Japan stablecoin space, see our earlier coverage of Ripple's regulatory positioning in 2026.