Japan: 13 Banks Invest in SBI’s Ripple-Powered Blockchain Payment App

Blockchain payment app MoneyTap, co-developed by Ripple and Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings, has received investments from 13 local banks, according to an SBI press release published on March 28.

In the announcement, SBI Holdings informs that Kiraboshi Bank, Shinsei Bank and Hokuriku Bank, along with ten other local financial institutions, have joined their project as shareholders.

MoneyTap, which was designed to quickly transfer money via a mobile app using Ripple’s blockchain solution xCurrent, will reportedly receive investments from other Japanese financial institutions later this year. According to SBI Holdings, the banks using the solution are going to cooperate to enable domestic bank-to-bank transfers.

As per the press release, the goal of using MoneyTap is to create a remittance infrastructure that will operate 24 hours a day, allowing customers to send money from their domestic bank to any other institution — domestic or foreign — participating in the project.

In October 2018, Ripple and SBI Holdings officially launched MoneyTap. The project was initially joined by three Japanese banks – SBI Sumishin Net Bank, Suruga Bank and Resona Bank. However, the announcement stated that MoneyTap will eventually see a consortium of 61 Japanese banks — representative of more than 80 percent of all of Japan’s banking assets.

Prior to the app’s official launch, SBI Holdings received a license from Japanese regulators to handle electronic payments as an “Electronic Settlement Agency Service Provider.”

Remittance solutions designed by Ripple are used for both domestic and cross-border interbanking transactions. For instance, Spanish banking group Santander is using Ripple’s xCurrent for international money transfers in Spain, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Poland.

UAE Exchange and payment platform Unimoni are also using Ripple’s blockchain-based platform to complete real-time transactions to Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank.