SBI enters deals with Circle, Startale, and Ripple as Japanese bank forms crypto ties

Japan’s SBI Holdings is expanding its crypto footprint through partnerships with blockchain firms Circle, Startale, and Ripple. The financial giant said it will develop new platforms for tokenized trading with more stablecoin products, pending changes in Japan’s digital asset market regulations.

SBI Holdings, a global financial services group with over 11 trillion yen ($75 billion) in assets under management, announced a joint venture with Singapore-based Startale Group. 

The deal, unveiled on Friday, will focus on building an on-chain trading platform for tokenized stocks and real-world assets. SBI serves more than 65 million customers worldwide, including 14 million securities account holders.

SBI Venture announces tokenized equities and stablecoin integration plans 

Sota Watanabe, founder of Startale, said the partnership could help transform how investors trade equities. 

“The whole financial market is moving from an offchain environment to onchain. We believe that the tokenized stock revolution is the largest opportunity and onchain trading is the next frontier,” he remarked. 

Watanabe explained that the system will allow continuous, programmable trading of US and Japanese equities, with instantaneous settlements.

“While traditional markets remain closed 70% of the time, our platform will enable continuous trading,” Watanabe added. He explained that the initiative is about creating new financial instruments that merge traditional equities with the flexibility of decentralized finance.

Startale, best known for co-developing Sony’s layer-2 blockchain Soneium and Astar Network, did not specify what technology stack the venture will use. Watanabe told reporters that the technical architecture is not ready to be revealed.

“What matters is the joint venture’s mission: to deliver an always-on, compliant trading platform for tokenized assets,” he surmised, adding that a timeline will be disclosed later.

Ripple stablecoin RLUSD sets sights on Japan market

Alongside the Startale deal, SBI also signed a memorandum of understanding with Ripple Labs to bring Ripple USD (RLUSD) to Japan. The stablecoin is expected to launch in the fiscal year ending March 2026. 

SBI’s crypto subsidiary, SBI VC Trade, will act as the distributor. It is licensed as an Electronic Payment Instruments Exchange Service Provider.

“RLUSD is designed to be a true industry standard, providing a reliable and efficient bridge between traditional and decentralized finance,” said Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins. He added that the development could contribute to the digitalization of capital markets, including exchanges.

In its joint statement, the companies said the new stablecoin can be used under Japan’s updated regulatory frameworks, which now provide guidelines for stablecoin issuance and distribution. 

Japan became one of the first countries to formally regulate digital assets in 2017, when it recognized cryptocurrencies as legal payment methods under the Payment Services Act and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. The government is also in discussions of approving yen-backed stablecoins, Cryptopolitan reported last week.

“Through our corporate ecosystem together with Startale’s blockchain technology, we have great expectations for creating a new decentralized platform,” the Japanese conglomerate noted.

SBI also confirmed a separate venture with Circle, the issuer of USDC, to promote the adoption of the dollar-backed stablecoin in Japan. The joint initiative could expand USDC’s use in local Web3 applications and financial services. 

The firm said the collaboration is intended to create new use cases for USDC in Japan’s digital finance sector, including settlements and decentralized applications.

Details of the Circle initiative have not been fully disclosed, but the financial entities promised it would promote compliant usage of stablecoins in Web3 platforms.

Meanwhile, SBI Holdings appointed Shotaro Iwano as the managing director of SBI Ventures Europe, the company’s European investment arm, earlier this week. He will now take over the office in Berlin, where the Europe team is based.

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