There is the opportunity for great synergy between blockchain research and Rakuten’s many existing FinTech interests. Given Rakuten’s reach into banking, payments and insurance, as well as a host of digital services, no one can doubt Rakuten’s position as a FinTech leader.

The Rakuten Blockchain Lab (RBL), setup in August 2016, is focussed on exploring and creating many new interesting applications of blockchain technology for the benefit of Rakuten and their customers. RBL specialises in engineering Blockchain solutions using a range of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) deployed in a modern, microservices based, cloud native architecture.

RBL are building the blockchain platform that supports adoption of DLT within Rakuten businesses and also with Rakuten partners and 3rd parties.

The technical stack underpinning the blockchain platform includes:

• Distributed Ledger Technology products such as Multichain and also public blockchains e.g. Bitcoin and Ethereum
• Node.js micro-services
• Relational database technologies e.g. Postgres, Oracle
• Docker containers and Kubernetes container management
• Microsoft Azure Cloud