SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 29, 2016) - Ripple, global provider of financial settlement solutions, and SBI Holdings, Inc., global financial services company, today announced the creation of SBI Ripple Asia. The new company will build an engineering and sales force across Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, and ASEAN countries to sell and install Ripple's enterprise solutions for cross-border payments at banks across the region.
According to the 2015 World Payments Report, non-cash payments in Japan, China and South Korea alone topped $45 billion in 2013 with overall volume trending upward. Ripple will continue to operate Ripple APAC to service Australia, Singapore and other high-demand growth markets in the region.
"Surveying the market, Ripple was the only company that has delivered battle-tested enterprise solutions and global bank customer traction, including commercial deals with top banks already signed in Asia Pacific," said President and CEO of SBI Holdings Yoshitaka Kitao. "Distributed financial technology is undoubtedly transforming financial infrastructure and we're excited to drive its adoption throughout Asia."
SBI Holdings has a long track record of success building joint ventures with international financial services brands, including E-LOAN, E*TRADE, MorningStar, and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. The company also holds stakes in 10 financial institutions across ASEAN, providing a ready-made distribution network for Ripple's bank solutions.
"SBI's deep expertise and relationships across banking, capital markets, insurance and payments will help aggressively scale Ripple in some of the fastest-growing financial markets in the world," said Ripple co-founder and CEO Chris Larsen. "Interbank payments establish 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."
SBI Holdings and Ripple have also agreed to explore working together to list XRP, Ripple's native digital asset, through its online brokerage properties, including the largest online trading platform in Japan.
About Ripple
Ripple provides global financial settlement solutions to ultimately enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information -- giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV). Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly, without correspondent banks, and with real-time certainty of settlement. Banks around the world are partnering with Ripple to improve their cross-border payment offerings, and to join the growing, global network of financial institutions and market makers laying the foundation for the Internet of Value.
Ripple is a venture-backed startup with offices in San Francisco, New York and Sydney. As an industry advocate for the Internet of Value, Ripple sits on the Federal Reserve's Faster Payments Task Force Steering Committee and co-chairs the W3C's Web Payments Working Group.
About SBI Holdings
SBI Holdings, Inc. was established in 1999 as a pioneer of Internet-based financial services. The company provides financial services in a wide range of categories, including securities, banking and insurance and has formed the world's first Internet-based financial conglomerate. Recently the company has expanded its business into biotechnology, including research and development and sales related to pharmaceuticals, health foods and cosmetics. As a result, the company's revenue of FY2014 was JPY 245.0 billion and has 5,464 employees as of the end of September 2015.
Additionally, the company has developed its overseas business, focusing on Asian developing countries, to become the representative financial company in Asia. Currently, the company already has overseas offices in approximately 20 countries and regions.