Japan’s SBI Group To Use Ripple (XRP) More Significantly

By Rishma Banerjee

The SBI Group is one of the largest multi-billion dollar financial institutions that focus on biotechnology-related business, asset management and financial services. It has pioneered the development an the distribution of Ripple based products in Asia.

Recently the CEO of the Japanese financial giant, SBI, Yoshitaka Kitao, at their Financial Results Briefing, announced that the firm was discussing the creation of a project for R3, which will use Ripple (XRP) more extensively.

“We have already begun discussions to create a project to use XRP for R3. By using R3, XRP is used more extensively.”

In May, last year, the SBI group had led the largest blockchain consortium, that managed to raise 107 million USD for R3CEV, to encourage development of enterprise-grade blockchain networks and it has been the SBI Group’s mantle, since then to create a wide range of blockchain-based systems which can be utilized by large-scale conglomerates. After Russian bank SBI Bank LLC, joined the R3 consortium, in April of this year, the SBI Group said,

“We regard blockchains as the core of FinTech innovation and are working on various measures both in Japan and abroad. Through this effort, we believe that we can contribute to the progress of the global blockchain field.”

Though not a lot of information has been released by the company about their new developments related to XRP, analysts believe that after the success of MoneyTap, they will go on to introduce a platform that uses XRP, extensively, and also encourages the banks in the R3 consortium and SBI Ripple Asia to use the same. MoneyTap is a mobile application that uses the Ripple network, to process international transactions, and is set to be used by 61 Japanese banks to conduct overseas transactions.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, in an interview with CNBC, stated that the company has plans to bring a dozen of major banks onto its blockchain network.

“It’s been an incredible 2018 for us. We’re now signing up one bank to a production contract per week. We announced that we signed the largest bank in Kuwait, the National Bank of Kuwait, so it [Ripple] continues to build momentum and the dynamic there is the network effect. The more participants, the more value in joining. So we’re seeing that momentum build.”