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NEC, Mitsui & Co. and Quantinuum announced a trial in which quantum tokens were issued and redeemed over 10 km of optical fiber using NEC’s quantum key distribution (QKD) system. The November 18, 2024 announcement describes a successful demonstration in an environment assumed for commercial use—not the launch of a live payment service. NEC calls the tokens unforgeable and instantly redeemable, but its release does not publish detailed security measurements or adversarial test results.
What the Japanese companies demonstrated
In its November 18, 2024 announcement, NEC said it, Mitsui & Co. and Quantinuum had successfully trialed quantum tokens. NEC supplied the QKD system for quantum cryptographic communication; the announcement says Mitsui and Quantinuum had been working on practical tokens based on properties of quantum physics patented by Quantinuum.
The trial involved issuing and redeeming tokens across 10 km of optical fiber. NEC described it as the first demonstration of both activities in an environment assumed for commercial use. That priority claim is NEC’s, rather than an independently verified ranking. The company said the result matched theoretical predictions.
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What a quantum token is—and what “unforgeable” means
NEC defines a token as a digital certificate indicating rights or value, such as digital assets, user information or access rights. A quantum-token scheme uses quantum information as part of the token protocol; simply sending an ordinary digital token over a quantum network would not, by itself, give the token the properties claimed here.
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Quantum information cannot be copied perfectly in general, a property known as the no-cloning principle. Protocols can use that constraint to make unauthorized duplication detectable or prevent it under specified assumptions. In a separate 2024 paper, researchers describe quantum tokens as aiming to combine unforgeability, user privacy and instant validation, with no-cloning central to the approach. Their paper concerns S-tokens and a different experiment; it does not report the Japanese companies’ trial.
NEC’s statement that its quantum tokens “cannot be forged and can be redeemed instantly” is the company’s description of the technology, not a universal guarantee for every quantum-token design or threat model. The announcement does not provide a security proof, describe tested adversarial scenarios, or report a measured probability of fraud. Nor does it give a token count, transaction rate, latency or error rate for this trial.
How this result differs from a commercial payment system
The announcement reports an experimental issuance-and-redemption trial, not a production financial service. It does not say that customers can obtain tokens, that the system processed live payments, or that a commercial rollout date has been set. NEC listed possible applications including data restoration and certification, as well as high-speed financial transactions and commodity trading; these are prospective uses, not services shown to be operating in the trial.
The release says equipment was partially supported through a research project to build a global quantum cryptographic communication network, within Japan’s MIC ICT-priority technology project and the Cabinet Office’s SIP Photonics and Quantum Technology for Society 5.0 program. NEC said it would continue work toward social implementation of quantum cryptographic technology, but did not confirm current commercial availability.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Keep the separate S-token experiment’s figures separate
Jiang and co-authors’ 2024 S-token paper describes a distinct experiment, not the NEC-Mitsui-Quantinuum trial. Its figures should not be treated as performance results for the Japanese demonstration.
| Reported result | Experiment | What it refers to |
|---|---|---|
| 10 km of optical fiber | NEC, Mitsui and Quantinuum announcement, 2024 | Distance stated for the Japanese token issuance-and-redemption trial. |
| 88.24% heralded single-photon source system efficiency | Jiang et al., 2024 | Efficiency reported for the separate S-token experiment. |
| 2.77 km and 60.54 km optical-fiber networks | Jiang et al., 2024 | Intra-city and inter-city distances described for that separate experiment. |
The studies are not directly comparable on these figures alone: the NEC announcement does not provide matching efficiency or network-distance metrics, and the two sources describe different protocols and experimental setups.
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