Mitsui to offer retail access to digital securities tied to aircraft and ships

Key Takeaways

• Mitsui will offer Japan’s first digital securities for fractional ownership of aircraft and ships via its Alterna platform.
• Japan’s digital securities market more than doubled in 2025, driven by expanding use cases and institutional entry.

Japanese trading giant Mitsui & Co. plans to offer the country’s first digital securities for aircraft and ships, according to a Nikkei report.

The products will be issued via Mitsui & Co. Digital Asset Management, which already leads Japan in real estate tokenization through its investment platform Alterna.

The move will allow retail investors to gain fractional exposure to capital-intensive assets like planes and cargo vessels, with minimum investments starting around 100,000 yen ($630).

Japan aims to double shipbuilding output by 2035, and aircraft demand is projected to more than double by 2043.

Mitsui’s goal is to quadruple digital securities sales to 100 billion yen by fiscal 2030. Its product roadmap includes future offerings for lower-volatility assets like corporate bonds, alongside more real estate products. The company also plans to deploy AI tools to cut product development time from up to 12 months to just 1–2 months.

Japan’s digital securities market is accelerating, with issuance hitting 152.9 billion yen in 2025, more than double 2024 levels, according to the report.

Major brokerages like Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and platforms such as Osaka Digital Exchange already offer digital securities and are broadening access through secondary and peer-to-peer markets.