2020
Byacco
The first DLT-based local payment system at a Japanese university
Byacco is a local digital payment system built for the University of Aizu in Japan: the first local payment solution built on distributed ledger technology in a Japanese university.
RoleHead of Design & Brand
ClientUniversity of Aizu
CompanySoramitsu
Timeline2020
PlatformsiOS, Android
ScopeDesign Oversight, Visual Communications
Context
Byacco handles cafeteria payments, grocery purchases, and peer-to-peer transfers for campus use, running on Hyperledger Iroha, the same open-source blockchain framework behind Cambodia's Bakong. The name comes from Byakko, the white tiger of Aizu folklore.
Launched in 2020, it was one of the earliest projects in what grew into Soramitsu's portfolio of digital currency deployments across the Asia-Pacific, and an early proof that the technology could serve everyday payments at human scale.