Japan's Ministry of Finance plans to set up an authoritative expert group in April to discuss the feasibility of introducing a digital yen, according to NHK, a mainstream Japanese media.

According to the report, the Ministry of Finance team will work to establish a central bank digital currency (CBDC) framework and draw on a key technology study carried out by the Central Bank of Japan (BOJ) over the past few years. The Ministry intends to use the investigation report of the authoritative panel of experts to lay the foundation for the possible issuance of digital yen.

CBDC is the digital version number of other currencies, such as the US dollar, Japanese yen and Europe, and is issued and supported by central banks. Unlike digital currencies, which claim to be decentralized and not supported by government departments or intermediate authorities, CBDC is issued by the central bank and operates in the national system.

Although CBDC is still in the early stages of sustainable development, people who resist the central bank issuing digital currency have expressed concern that the technology will give currency lending authorities unprecedented control over financial investment. In addition, some people think that CBDC is unnecessary and traditional payment methods are enough.

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Even with this concern, many central banks around the world are exploring the probability of issuing CBDC, and the debate over its application continues. Foreign countries, China, India and several European countries have long been studying the feasibility of state-owned digital currency.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the United Arab Emirates Central Bank (CBUAE) has made a breakthrough at the full release level of CBDC called Digital dirhams for Chinese and cross-border payment platforms. On March 23rd, CBUAE announced that it had signed agreements with G42 Cloud and R3 to provide infrastructure technology for the implementation of CBDC. In addition to the test of processing payments, digital dirhams are expected to promote the diversity of the financial sector, as the host country aims to become a cashless society.