Japanese giants assemble for authentication work on national metaverse

Mar 6, 2023, 10:37 pm EST | Jim Nash

Japanese giants assemble for authentication work on national metaverse

A large group of multinational Japanese companies, led by financial heavyweights and supported by digital ID players, has said it will build something called the Japan Metaverse Economic Zone.

Apparently unwilling to wait for any one large company (as with Meta in the United States), this partnership has assigned roles for each company. The biggest role, of course, will be banking and financial services.

The JMEZ would be nothing less than an open infrastructure on which to capture metaverse transaction revenue from one of the biggest world economies.

The infrastructure is called Ryugukoku, a placeholder that would seem to have no ready translation to English. It is described by the group as a metaverse infrastructure with a worldview.

Ryugukoku is to be based on a construction framework called the Pegasus world kit, which was created by JP Games, a holding of TBT Lab Group, one of the invited JMEZ metaverse founders.

Much attention is paid to the creation of so-called multi-magic passports (MMPs), which are defined as authentication certificates that also can facilitate payments.

JCB Co., a consumer credit lender, will create the authentication passports and build digital twins for merchants. Mizuho Financial Group, a bank holding company, likewise will provide “functions and expertise in the MMP/payment area” as well as provision coins and promote regional digital-transformation collaboration.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, or MUFG, has been assigned support for the passports. It is a bank holding company and financial services firm. It also will create web3 financial functions and promote overseas expansions.

Resona Holdings, a banking group, will research the next generation of identity authentication and payment. Fujitsu Ltd., which also develops technology for biometric authentication, is expected to provision services and technologies making digital data rights-management less cumbersome and more secure.

Sompo Japan Insurance has been assigned risk analysis and insurance development, and in many eyes, it might the company to watch. Its metaverse portfolio is more fundamental to success here than any infrastructure or framework projects. ID and AI will be tough-to-tame risk activities.