Japan’s Minna Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fukuoka Financial Group, is set to commence commercial operations in May 2021.

According to the company, Minna Bank will be the first digital bank to launch its services in the country.

The digital lender secured a banking licence in December last year and will seek to cater to the needs of ‘digital natives’.

It will be powered by a core banking system jointly developed with Accenture and will entirely run on Google Cloud.

Minna Bank will also make the banking system available to third parties to power discrete embedded finance offerings or run comprehensive branded banking services.

The customers will be able to open an account, make deposits, withdraw and transfer funds, all through their smartphone.

Minna Bank president Koji Yokota said: “Minna Bank’s mission is to ‘Deliver valuable connections to everyone’.

“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.”

Accenture global banking industry group head Alan McIntyre said: “As consumers increasingly manage their lives using digital technology, banks’ legacy systems make it difficult to provide highly personalised services and connect to diverse ecosystems.

“Minna Bank’s cloud-first approach provides human-centred products and services that deliver more value; Accenture is helping it deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity – allowing the bank to emerge as an industry leader.”