AZ-COM Maruwa Holdings, a Tokyo-listed logistics firm with $1.4 billion in annual revenue, will pay its 2,300 partner drivers in JPYC, a yen-backed stablecoin, according to an original report from Nikkei. The company is also investing ¥1 billion into the JPYC project. It’s the first time a major Japanese corporation has used a regulated yen stablecoin to pay workers at scale.
AZ-COM Maruwa has run delivery operations for Amazon Japan since 2017, coordinating a large network of subcontracted drivers who move packages for the e-commerce platform. Those drivers and subcontractors will now be paid in JPYC rather than relying solely on cash or same-day bank transfer, based on the company’s plans as reported by Nikkei.
Source – Nikkei
The ¥1 billion investment goes beyond a standard vendor deal. AZ-COM Maruwa is taking a direct stake in JPYC’s business, tying its own balance sheet to whether the stablecoin succeeds. For a logistics operator whose margins depend on paying a large, dispersed workforce quickly and cheaply, moving settlement onto a blockchain rail is a bet that JPYC can do that job better than the banking system it replaces.
What This Means for Japan’s Cash-Heavy B2B Payments
Japan’s business-to-business payments still run largely on cash and bank wire transfers, a system that gets slow and costly at the scale AZ-COM Maruwa operates. A logistics company moving 2,300 payees onto a stablecoin gives other corporates a working example rather than a theoretical one. You can check our coverage on how stablecoins are speeding up cross-border payments across Asia. AZ-COM Maruwa’s move suggests the next frontier is closer to home: domestic payroll and vendor settlement inside Japan itself.
Why This Rollout Changes JPYC’s Adoption Story
JPYC has mostly been a compliance story so far, a token built to meet Japan’s 2023 Payment Services Act amendment, which lets registered banks, trust companies, and licensed fund-transfer providers issue yen-backed tokens as regulated electronic payment instruments. JPYC itself only began issuing under that framework in October 2025 as Japan’s first fully regulated yen stablecoin.
That regulatory clearance created the legal path, but it didn’t create demand. AZ-COM Maruwa changes that by testing whether a regulated stablecoin can actually replace bank transfers for a workforce this size, not just satisfy a regulator.
What this means for you: AZ-COM Maruwa is putting ¥1 billion behind JPYC and using it to pay thousands of drivers directly, not testing it in a small pilot or simply listing it on an exchange. That distinction matters if you’re new to stablecoins. It’s the difference between a company talking about adoption and one actually paying its workforce with it.
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