au Jibun Bank Brand Guidelines: A 2008 Mobile Bank, Rainbow Branches & a 2020 au Rename

A bank planned for the mobile phone.

au Jibun Bank began as a joint project of a bank and a mobile network. Japanese Wikipedia, citing releases from KDDI and the bank then called Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, says the plan grew out of the merger of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and UFJ Bank announced in 2004, as part of the merged bank’s retail internet strategy. A preparatory company with a long working name, Mobile Net Bank Establishment Investigation Corporation, was set up in Tokyo on 25 May 2006, with its president from the bank and its vice-president from KDDI.

On 9 June 2008, after the preliminary licence review, the company took the name Jibun Bank. “Jibun” means “oneself” in Japanese, and Japanese Wikipedia explains the choice as the idea of “your own bank inside your mobile phone,” picked over other candidates that also meant “my bank.” The bank’s own company profile gives 17 June 2008 as its date of establishment and the date of its banking licence; it opened for business later that month and began customer services in July 2008. Japanese Wikipedia classes it among Japan’s “new type” banks.

The early service was built for feature phones. Japanese Wikipedia says a passbook application came preinstalled on most au handsets from the autumn and winter 2008 models, and that accounts could be opened by photographing identity papers with the phone’s camera. The bank says it added foreign-currency deposits in 2009 and a smartphone app in December 2010, and that its feature-phone service closed in January 2021.

Deposits, currency and the smartphone ATM.

The bank describes itself as a bank whose first point of contact with customers is the smart device, and its company history reads as a list of app features. It says it began offering Chinese yuan deposits to individuals in 2011, which it calls a first for a Japanese bank; built a transaction-confirmation feature into its app in 2015; launched online mortgages in December 2015; and in March 2017 introduced a “Smartphone ATM” service that lets customers use partner cash machines with the app instead of a card. In 2019 it added a cardless debit service, and it has sold lottery-linked deposits and payment links for racing and sports-lottery sites.

Japanese Wikipedia, citing KDDI material, says some services first offered by the two parents passed to the bank: a KDDI co-branded credit card in 2008, and in 2012 a consumer-loan business from the MUFG group, relaunched as Jibun Loan. The bank has no staffed branches. Its ATM tie-ups began in 2008 with MUFG Bank, Seven Bank and Japan Post Bank, Japanese Wikipedia says, and later reached E-net, Lawson’s ATMs and, from November 2024, Aeon Bank. In June 2026 the bank says it signed an agreement with Aeon Bank, PayPay Bank and SBI Shinsei Bank to share information on misuse of home loans.

The bank also lends its name to an economic indicator. Its company history says it began sponsoring the Jibun Bank Japan PMI, a purchasing managers’ index, in July 2019. The bank says its smartphone app won a Good Design Award in 2017 and that its environmental “eco project” won one in 2022; it renewed the app in December 2022.

Design and documentation.

Japan’s internet and retail-group banks present themselves mostly through screens rather than branches. Sony Bank opened in 2001 with a service website, MONEYKit, instead of a branch network, and Rakuten Bank, which began in 2000 as eBANK Corporation, calls itself an internet-only bank. Their pages are organised around everyday tasks: deposits in yen and foreign currencies, card and home loans, investment trusts and, more and more, apps and account opening by smartphone.

Many carry the name of a larger consumer group. Rakuten Bank took its parent’s name in 2010, and Sony Bank belongs to Sony Financial Group. The banks set a Japanese name beside a Latin one — 楽天銀行 with Rakuten Bank, ソニー銀行 with Sony Bank — so the same name has to work in two scripts on cards, apps and statements.

Cash is still part of the picture, and it is reached through other companies’ machines. Rather than building large ATM networks of their own, these banks connect to machines in convenience stores and other banks: Rakuten Bank’s 2010 tie-ups with E-net and Lawson put its cards into FamilyMart, Ministop and Lawson stores, and Sony Bank’s history lists connections with Seven Bank, Lawson, E-net and Aeon Bank. Card faces have become a place for character illustration, as with Sony Bank’s PlayStation and PEANUTS designs.

Behind the consumer pages sits a more formal layer of disclosure sections, press releases and investor documents. This guide sets out what can be checked about each bank — who set it up, who owns it and when its name changed — and marks clearly what rests on the bank’s own word.

From a joint venture to a KDDI bank.

The ownership changed in two steps. On 1 April 2019, the bank says, it issued new shares to KDDI and became a consolidated subsidiary of au Financial Holdings, KDDI’s wholly owned finance holding company; on 9 February 2020 it changed its trade name from Jibun Bank to au Jibun Bank Corporation, putting KDDI’s mobile brand au in front of the old name. MUFG Bank kept a stake until the second step. KDDI and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group announced a rebuilding of their partnership in November 2024, reviewing the shareholdings in the bank and in the brokerage then called au Kabucom Securities, Keitai Watch reported in October 2026. The bank’s history says au Financial Holdings made it a wholly owned subsidiary in January 2025; Japanese Wikipedia dates the purchase of MUFG Bank’s 22 percent to 31 January 2025 and adds that the two groups said they would keep working together. As a later effect, Keitai Watch reported, transfers between au Jibun Bank and MUFG Bank will be treated as transfers to another bank from 1 April 2027.

The visual identity leans on colour and character more than on a single mark. Japanese Wikipedia notes that the bank’s branches are named after the seven colours of the rainbow — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet in Japanese — and that in August 2021 five more were added on the theme of “where the rainbow appears,” named sky, earth, forest, lake and river. The bank says it published a rainbow version of its logo in September 2021, introduced an official character called Jibunbun in June 2023 and renewed its purpose, philosophy and brand message in December 2023. Its company pages now carry the line “Bright, all the way to the future” (our translation of 未来まで明るく). It has also been an official sponsor of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team since January 2022, the bank says.

The company profile lists its head office in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, and au Financial Holdings as its sole shareholder.

For a design guide, au Jibun Bank shows how a bank with no counters builds a recognisable personality from naming, colour and an app. Compare au, the KDDI mobile brand whose name it carries, and MUFG, its former co-owner. For this guide we use a warm orange, a teal and charcoal with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep au Jibun Bank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.