Ripple Teams With SBI Holdings To Meet Rising Asian Demand For Cross-Border Payments
Ripple, a provider of financial settlement solutions, and SBI Holdings, Inc., a financial services company, have partnered in launching a new company, SBI Ripple Asia, to serve China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and ASEAN countries. SBI Ripple Asia will establish a sales and engineering group to sell and install its enterprise solutions for cross-border payments at banks.
The 2015 World Payments Report notes that non-cash payments in China, Japan and South Korea exceeded $145 billion in 2013, with further growth expected, Ripple noted in its announcement. Ripple will continue to operate its Ripple APAC service for Singapore, Australia and other growth markets in the region.
Why SBI Chose Ripple
Yoshitaka Kitao, president and CEO of SBI Holdings, said Ripple was the only company to deliver “battle-tested enterprise solutions and global customer bank traction,” which includes commercial agreements with leading banks in the Asia Pacific region. He said distributed financial technology is transforming the financial infrastructure.
SBI Holdings has built joint ventures with international financial service brands such as E*TRADE, E-LOAN, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank and MorningStar. The company holds stakes in 10 financial institutions throughout ASEAN, offering Ripple’s bank solutions a ready-made distribution network.
SBI’s relationships and expertise in capital markets, insurance, banking and payments will enable it to scale Ripple in some of the world’s fastest-growing financial markets, said Chris Larsen, Ripple co-founder and CEO. He noted that interbank payments create the foundation of the “Internet of Value.”
“SBI is the perfect partner to help forge that foundation and then extend Ripple’s capabilities to new use cases in the future,” Larsen said.
Also read: SWIFT launches initiative to improve cross-border payments using blockchain
Further Partnerships Possible
Ripple and SBI Holdings also agreed to consider working together to list XRP, Ripple’s native digital asset, via its online brokerage properties which include Japan’s biggest online trading platform.
Ripple, a venture-backed startup with offices in New York, San Francisco and Sydney, offers global financial settlement products to allow customers worldwide to exchange value the same way they already exchange information. These solutions will deliver what the company characterizes as the “Internet of Value.” The company reduces the total cost of settlement by allowing banks to transact directly without correspondent banks and with real-time settlement certainty.
Banks partner with Ripple in order to strengthen their cross-border payment offerings and enter the global network of financial institutions that are establishing the foundation for the Internet of Value.
Ripple sits on the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force Steering Committee. It also co-chairs the W3C’s Web Payments Working Group.
SBI Holding, Inc. offers financial services in several categories, including banking, insurance and securities. It has established the first Internet-based financial conglomerate in the world. The company has expanded into biotechnology, including research and development, as well as sales related to health foods, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.
Images from Ripple and Shutterstock.
