SBI Digital Practice and Nodeinfra Launch Project Musubi for Japan-Korea Stablecoin Payments

SBI Digital Practice (SBI DP), the SBI Holdings subsidiary focused on Canton Network development, has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s Nodeinfra to construct a cross-border payment network linking Japan and Korea. The initiative, named Project Musubi, will run on the Canton Network and is designed to support payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement and distributed netting using yen, won, and dollar-denominated stablecoins alongside tokenised assets.

Responsibilities are divided along national lines. SBI DP will build the integration layer connecting legacy financial infrastructure to the Canton Network and will coordinate the participation of Japanese financial institutions. Nodeinfra takes the lead on core protocol development, Daml smart contract engineering, and developer tooling, and will manage onboarding for Korean financial institutions and custodians.

The project carries a structural dependency that neither party can resolve unilaterally: the stablecoins it requires do not yet circulate freely in either jurisdiction. SBI launched its yen stablecoin, JPYSC, in June, but it remains restricted to the SBI VC Trade platform while regulatory and tax questions are resolved. In South Korea, stablecoin legislation that was expected to be finalised earlier this year has not yet emerged. What the project reveals is that institutional preparation is running ahead of the legal frameworks in both markets, with Korean traditional institutions already investing in crypto exchanges in anticipation of incoming regulation.