PlayStation Goes Crypto? Sony Stablecoin May Be Used for Gaming Funds: Nikkei

Video recreation and tech large Sony Group plans to difficulty a U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin subsequent yr for use to buy video games and anime inside its digital ecosystem, in response to a report from Japanese outlet Nikkei.

This plan is prone to solely apply to the U.S., due to the passing of the GENIUS Act earlier this yr—a invoice that paved a transparent regulatory path for issuing stablecoins within the nation.

It comes after Sony’s banking division, Sony Bank, filed to accumulate a U.S. nationwide banking constitution in October. This license would enable for its subsidiary, Connectia Trust, to have interaction in “sure specified actions involving cryptocurrency.”

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) later urged the national trade association to block Sony’s bid, claiming it was exploiting regulatory loopholes to keep away from conventional banking oversight.

According to Nikkei, Sony Bank hopes that U.S. customers will pay for subscriptions in its stablecoin throughout its ecosystem In doing so, it would reduce payment fees often incurred when using credit cards. Sony Bank has partnered with stablecoin firm Bastion, according to Nikkei, which can present the infrastructure for the Sony stablecoin.

Sony’s thriving PlayStation platform includes digital games and subscriptions for the PlayStation 5 console, along with PC games and others that can stream to various devices via cloud computing. Nikkei’s report doesn’t specifically mention PlayStation, but all of Sony’s gaming efforts run through that brand. Sony Group also operates the popular Crunchyroll anime streaming service.

Decrypt reached out to Sony for remark relating to the reported plans, however didn’t instantly obtain a response.

This shouldn’t be the primary time that Sony has flirted with crypto implementations.

In 2021, Sony applied for a U.S. patent to create standardized digital infrastructure that would allow gamers to own and transfer NFTs. The application said these NFTs could include in-game skins, avatars, artwork, weapons, or “video game skills.” Sony has yet to implement such functionality within the PlayStation ecosystem, however.

That same year, Sony also applied for a patent for a system that tracked digital assets in video games using a blockchain. And in January 2025, Sony and partner Startale Group launched the Ethereum layer-2 network Soneium into mainnet.

Fans of the tech giant hoped that Soneium would get a slew of PlayStation games rolling onto it. However, as of this writing, no major Sony franchise has released a crypto game on Soneium. Rather, it has become a network with NFT music collections and a growing library of smaller games, plus it hosted a tie-in with Square Enix’s now-shuttered crypto game, Symbiogenesis.