Toyota Systems, a wholly-owned IT subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation announced today that it is experimenting with a digital currency solution as part of a new pilot project with DeCurret, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.
This new project involves automating payments with its private digital currency to its 2,500 staff at Toyota Systems. The payments made in this digital currency are welfare-related, such as payments for employee benefits. Employees can also choose to exchange the benefits paid in the digital currency for other welfare points or gifts listed in a catalog, the firm said in a release. However, the firm has emphasized that this digital currency cannot be exchanged for Yen.
With this move, the main aim of Toyota Systems was to test the scalability and challenges for business payments, however, its long-term goal was to scale the digital currency beyond the use for welfare payments trials alone. According to the release, the long term vision entailed how the private digital currency could probably find its use in the firm’s supply chain and for business-to-business transactions.
Toyota Systems’ parent company, Toyota, also has the Toyota Blockchain Lab among its businesses, which has so far conducted trials with blockchain technology that includes identity, advertising, bond issuance, and p2p blockchain energy trading using electric car batteries.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned exchange Decurret involved in this project had earlier launched a digital currency trial for insurance firm Daido Life and Kansai Electric Power and has also hosted digital currency study groups in Japan – with session that included Japan’s central bank, the Ministry of Finance, and Accenture.
