The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has reported that its central bank digital currency pilot system processed a mixed workload of 50,000 transactions per second, providing its clearest performance data yet on the technical infrastructure being tested for a possible digital yen.
According to the central bank’s CBDC progress report, the test combined 10,000 update transactions per second, such as balance changes associated with payments, with another 40,000 balance inquiries per second.
The results form part of the BOJ’s pilot program, which has been running since April 2023 and combines technical experimentation with private-sector discussions through its CBDC Forum.
The BOJ cautioned that the current work does not represent a finalized design for a retail CBDC. Its pilot is intended to test technical feasibility and identify issues that would need to be addressed if Japan eventually moved toward implementation.
BOJ Raises Single-Account Capacity to 6,000 TPS
One of the tests focused on what happens when a large number of payments hit the same account, such as thousands of customers paying a major merchant within a short period.
Without additional measures, the BOJ estimated that processing capacity would be limited to roughly 50 to 100 TPS per account because database records would need to be updated sequentially.
The experimental system instead divided account records to allow transactions to be processed in parallel. With this approach, the system reached 6,000 TPS for a single account, although the BOJ found that splitting records too aggressively could reduce performance.
The 50,000 TPS mixed-workload test also exposed another issue: sudden transaction spikes produced significant increases in latency. The central bank said database configuration, tuning and controls on incoming requests would therefore become important under heavier loads.
BOJ Models a 500,000 TPS CBDC System
The BOJ then used the test results to examine how a much larger retail system could operate.
Its analysis assumed a hypothetical 500,000 TPS workload, consisting of 100,000 update transactions and 400,000 balance inquiries per second. This was a design assumption used to assess scalability rather than a throughput level achieved by the current pilot.
The central bank said higher transaction volumes could potentially be handled by scaling application servers, database servers and network capacity. Its analysis also calculated that splitting an account into 600 records could theoretically support about 18,500 TPS for concentrated processing.
Most notably, the BOJ said its experiments had so far identified no fatal technical barrier preventing processing capacity from being expanded toward the volumes envisioned for social implementation.
That finding does not mean a nationwide digital yen system is technically ready. The report said a production system would require substantially more server and network resources once redundancy, error handling, security and other real-world requirements are added.
Ledger Consistency and Security Remain Key Challenges
Moving from the pilot to a larger architecture could also require multiple ledger-management systems rather than the simpler setup used during testing.
That creates another problem: ensuring transaction information remains consistent across separate databases. The BOJ said recovery mechanisms would be needed if discrepancies emerged between ledgers.
Availability and disaster recovery are also under examination. The report discusses geographically distributed systems, backup sites and mechanisms designed to prevent a failure affecting one part of the infrastructure from spreading across the wider CBDC network.
The BOJ is also considering standardized APIs and interfaces that could allow a CBDC system to connect with banks and private payment systems. Such interoperability could make conversions between CBDC, deposits and other forms of private money easier, while creating additional operational requirements for participating institutions.
BOJ Forum Studies DLT, Stablecoins and Tokenized Assets
The report also shows that Japan’s CBDC work is extending beyond conventional payment architecture.
One CBDC Forum working group has examined alternative ledger models and DLT-related technologies while also discussing asset tokenization, stablecoins, tokenized deposits and interoperability with DLT platforms. These discussions are exploratory and do not mean the BOJ has selected blockchain as the underlying technology for a digital yen.
That work comes as Japan separately explores tokenized financial infrastructure. The Crypto Times recently reported that Japanese authorities are studying blockchain-based settlement for stocks and government bonds, while domestic banks are also developing stablecoin and tokenized-deposit systems.
BOJ Says Digital Yen Issuance Decision Remains Open
Despite the technical progress, the Bank of Japan has not decided whether Japan will issue a CBDC. The central bank said it will continue examining the ledger-management infrastructure at the core of the proposed system while holding further discussions with private businesses through the CBDC Forum.
Importantly, the BOJ said any decision on whether to issue a CBDC in Japan should be made through public discussions, keeping the digital yen project in an exploratory stage rather than moving it toward a confirmed launch.
For now, the BOJ’s latest results narrow the technical question rather than settle the policy one. The tests suggest that significantly higher CBDC transaction capacity may be technically achievable, but the central bank still faces substantial work around infrastructure efficiency, multi-ledger consistency, interoperability, endpoint devices and security before any social-scale implementation could be considered.
Also Read: India Favors Bilateral CBDC Payments Over a Unified BRICS Payment System
![trade[XYZ] Launches Event Contracts on Hyperliquid Using HIP-4](https://www.cryptotimes.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TradeXYZ-Launches-Events-on-Hyperliquid-for-Prediction-Markets--420x280.jpg)
