Minna Bank, Japan's first app-only bank, is set to open for business in May after acquiring a banking licence from the country's Financial Services Agency.
A wholly owned subsidiary of regional banking group Fukuoka Financial, Minna Bank’s services are designed to appeal to the needs of digital natives, providing account opening, deposits and funds transfer over consumer smartphones.
The new bank will run on a next generation banking system developed in partnership with Accenture and running on Google Cloud. The core banking system will not only run Minna's retail operations, but will also be made available to third parties who wish to offer discrete embedded finance offerings or run comprehensive branded banking services.
Koji Yokota, president, Minna Bank, says: “Together with our partners, we will widely offer our banking system as a service (BaaS). We have built our system based on the ideas of digital natives and a flexible API architecture, making it possible for everyone to create and deliver embedded finance offerings. We aim to be a pioneer in this space, and plan to deliver this cloud native banking system to Asia and other regions of the globe.”