A security-related shutdown at GMO Aozora Net Bank disrupted several Japanese financial services on November 10, 2026, affecting freee’s bank transfers and invoice financing, JPYC’s yen-stablecoin issuance and redemption platform, and fiat deposits and withdrawals at cryptocurrency exchanges Binance Japan and BitTrade. In today’s Japanese fintech and crypto roundup, the bank’s precautionary API shutdown also triggered a second round of interruptions early on November 11, before the bank confirmed another recovery at 06:25 Japan Standard Time (JST).
GMO Aozora suspends banking API twice after detecting unauthorized traffic
GMO Aozora Net Bank suspended its banking application programming interface (API) at 20:42 JST on November 10 after detecting unauthorized external communications targeting part of its API connection infrastructure.
The bank described the suspension as a preventive security measure rather than a response to confirmed theft. It stated that no personal information had been leaked and no unauthorized outflow of funds had occurred.
At 22:30 JST, the bank announced that the suspicious communications had subsided and restored API access. The initial shutdown lasted one hour and 48 minutes.
That return to normal did not last for the whole night.
At 01:02 JST on November 11, the bank suspended its API services again after detecting further unauthorized external communications. The second shutdown lasted until 06:25 JST, when the bank reported that it had confirmed the service was safe to resume.
The two interruptions amounted to seven hours and 11 minutes of confirmed API downtime, separated by a two-hour-and-32-minute period of restored access.
In its 06:30 JST update, the bank reiterated that neither personal information leakage nor unauthorized fund outflows had occurred. It did not disclose the source of the suspicious traffic, the number of affected API partners or the technical measures introduced before the second restoration.
The disruption extended beyond the bank’s direct customers. Companies using its infrastructure for payment initiation, bank-account integrations and digital-asset settlement had to restrict their own services.
freee halts transfers, invoice financing and FREENANCE
Japanese cloud-accounting company freee confirmed that the banking API suspension forced several of its financial services offline during the evening of November 10.
Its freee振込 bank-transfer service suspended all functions at 21:10 JST. The service remained unavailable until 22:38 JST, resulting in an interruption of one hour and 28 minutes.
Four minutes after the transfer service went offline, freee suspended freee請求書 即日入金, its invoice early-payment service, at 21:14 JST. Operations resumed at 23:24 JST, making the disruption two hours and 10 minutes long.
The invoice-financing service allows eligible businesses to access cash against outstanding invoices before their normal payment dates. Its suspension therefore affected a seperate financing function rather than merely delaying ordinary bookkeeping or invoice creation.
FREENANCE by freee, another service used by freelancers and small businesses, was also affected. Its entire service became unavailable at 21:17 JST and remained suspended until 23:24 JST, a period of two hours and seven minutes.
The freee services came back, one after another and not all at once.
The company’s accounting and business-incorporation products encountered an additional restriction involving account openings at GMO Aozora Net Bank’s freee branch.
From 21:22 JST, users could not submit new bank-account applications or check the status of existing applications through the affected freee integrations. The company subsequently announced that those functions had resumed at 22:40 JST.
freee attributed the disruptions to the bank’s precautionary API shutdown. Its incident records did not provide transaction volumes, the value of invoice-financing requests interrupted or the number of affected businesses.
Although freee marked the November 10 service interruptions resolved, its published records did not establish whether the bank’s second API shutdown caused additional restrictions early on November 11.
JPYC EX resumes stablecoin services, then suspends them again
JPYC EX, the issuance and redemption platform for Japan’s yen-denominated JPYC stablecoin, entered emergency maintenance at 20:47 JST on November 10.
The platform’s initial maintenance period lasted until 23:14 JST, an interruption of two hours and 27 minutes.
JPYC subsequently explained that the emergency maintenance had been necessary because GMO Aozora Net Bank had temporarily suspended its banking API.
The company stated that payments and asset deposits submitted in connection with stablecoin issuance or redemption during maintenance would be processed sequentially after service restoration.
But the first reopening did not settle the problem.
Following the bank’s second API suspension, JPYC announced another emergency maintenance period beginning at 01:30 JST on November 11. The company again suspended JPYC EX services and said incoming payments and asset deposits associated with issuance or redemption would be processed after maintenance ended.
Although GMO Aozora Net Bank subsequently restored its API at 06:25 JST, the JPYC announcements available for this report did not establish a corresponding time when the second JPYC EX maintenance period ended.
The incident affected the service connecting Japanese yen with the JPYC token, rather than establishing a failure of the underlying blockchain networks.
JPYC operates as a yen-linked electronic payment instrument under Japan’s stablecoin regulatory framework. Its issuance and redemption operations require financial infrastructure capable of handling incoming and outgoing fiat money.
The interruption comes shortly after Japan’s Financial Services Agency held a November 2 study-group meeting on digital and decentralized finance. JPYC, SBI VC Trade and the Japanese Bankers Association participated in the session, which examined developments involving digital financial infrastructure and stablecoins.
That meeting was not connected to the subsequent banking incident. It provides relevant context for a market in which tokenized money continues to rely on conventional banking infrastructure for issuance and redemption.
A previous analysis of stablecoin transfers and traditional payment services examined the same operational dependency: blockchain settlement can function independently while converting digital tokens into bank money still requires financial intermediaries.
JPYC has not disclosed the amount of issuance or redemption requests delayed during either maintenance period, nor the total value of payments awaiting procesing.
Binance Japan and BitTrade face yen transfer restrictions
The same banking disruption affected Japanese-yen funding services at cryptocurrency exchanges Binance Japan and BitTrade.
Binance Japan reported that deposits and withdrawals using GMO Aozora Net Bank were unavailable after the bank detected suspicious communications on November 10.
The exchange confirmed that customers could continue using PayPay Money and Docomo SMTB Net Bank for deposits and withdrawals, providing alternative payment routes during the restriction.
After the bank’s initial recovery, Binance Japan announced that yen deposits and withdrawals through GMO Aozora had resumed. Transactions submitted during the suspension would be reflected in customer accounts progressively.
The interruption followed an earlier problem involving the same banking connection. On November 1, Binance Japan experienced a disruption affecting GMO Aozora deposits and withdrawals, with withdrawals remaining unavailable until November 2 at approximately 16:45 JST.
DaveFinances previously reported that interruption in its roundup of Coinbase, Binance Japan and KuCoin restrictions. The earlier incident lasted approximately 29 hours and 45 minutes for withdrawals, although no common technical cause has been established between the two banking problems.
BitTrade separately confirmed that its Japanese-yen bank-transfer deposits and withdrawals had been suspended following the November 10 API shutdown.
The exchange told customers that other deposit methods, including quick deposits, convenience-store payments and Pay-easy, remained available while ordinary bank-transfer deposits were disrupted.
At 22:56 JST, BitTrade announced the restoration of affected yen funding services. It said deposits and withdrawals initiated during the outage would be reflected sequentially.
The second banking API shutdown occurred after both exchanges had published their initial recovery notices. Neither initial notice established that all affected transactions had been fully reconciled before the subsequent interruption.
BitTrade had already experienced an unrelated service disruption days earlier, when an external transaction-screening provider failure prevented cryptocurrency withdrawals for approximately 48 hours and 20 minutes. DaveFinances covered the restoration of BitTrade’s cryptocurrency withdrawals on November 7.
That earlier incident involved anti-money-laundering screening infrastructure, not the banking API problem reported on November 10. The two events nevertheless interrupted different stages of BitTrade’s customer transaction procesing within the same week.
Across the affected companies, the confirmed November 10 restrictions covered bank transfers, invoice financing, business-account applications, fiat funding and stablecoin issuance and redemption. GMO Aozora’s latest update confirmed that its banking API had been restored at 06:25 JST on November 11, but individual platforms remained responsible for confirming their own recoveries and clearing delayed transactions.
The bank has not disclosed the extent of the unauthorized communications or the number of connected businesses affected. Neither freee nor JPYC has provided a financial estimate of the disruption, and the exchanges have not quantified the yen deposits and withdrawals awaiting final reconciliation.
The next operational question is fairly plain: the bank was back online, but every dependant service still needed its own all-clear.
Johan Shamshad is Editor-in-Chief at Dave Finances, covering financial markets, digital assets, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, payments and regulation. Since 2023, he has also worked as an editor at Gulf News, the UAE English-language newspaper published by Al Nisr Publishing LLC. His work focuses on market-moving developments, company disclosures, regulatory changes and trading infrastructure, with an emphasis on primary-source verification and practical context for traders and investors.