Financial service giant SBI Holdings recently released their annual report for 2019 which outlined their business operations and long-term goals in areas such as Payments and Blockchain. SBI Holdings has been closely tied to Ripple since 2016 and it was quite interesting to see the comments they made on Ripple in the latest report.
SBI Holdings is a public company in ( Tokyo, Japan ) that currently employs thousands on a daily basis. Unlike many larger financial institutions, SBI strives to be a leader in the future of FinTech. If we go back a few years, we will see that Ripple has had solid ties with SBI since 2016. In 2016, SBI partnered with Ripple by forming “SBI Ripple Asia.” This was in addition to SBI launching the “Japan Bank Consortium,” which ultimately creates a remittance system in Japan among financial institutions. Ripple strives to monetize cross-border payments by leveraging XRP cryptocurrency for instant and cheap settlements through “ODL Solutions”. CEO of SBI, Yoshitaka Kitao has shown great interest in Ripple solutions even to the extent of posting about Ripple / XRP on social media.
At the time, this was seen as a great opportunity for Ripple to be involved with a financial entity that embraced blockchain and FinTech. Many would agree that large financial firms in the USA are still stuck in their traditional ways. This is why presenting a FinTech solution to large banks is usually a very long and tedious process ( if you even get the opportunity ).
SBI Holdings And Innovative Industries
In the 2019 annual report, it’s definitely not a typical report many see from a traditional Bank of America or JP Morgan Chase. SBI has all sorts of visions to conquer 21st century industries such as:
- FinTech
- Artificial Intelligence
- Blockchain
- Quantum Computing
Ripple And XRP Involvement
It was always evident that SBI had a lot of faith in Ripple technologies, but the way they explained Ripple in the annual report was quite jaw dropping. One way SBI plans to penetrate FinTech is by pushing for cashless societies in the form of “Money Tap.” Based on the report, Money Tap accounts will essentially connect to financial institutions, so users can instantly send money “24 hours a day / 365 days a year.” In the report, SBI mentioned that “we are determined to expand our range of financial services, including the creation of remittance and settlement systems based on our alliances with Ripple and R3.”
The jaw dropping statements were mentioned in regards to SBI explaining why they partnered with Ripple and R3. According to the report, SBI stated that “we believe that the solutions developed by these two companies are likely to become global standards for a wide range of financial businesses, including not only crypto-assets, but also international money transfers and trade finance.”
SBI also stated that “we believe that the technologies closest to becoming world standards are those held by the U.S. companies Ripple, to which I referred earlier, and R3, which provides Corda.”
XRP Price Reacting To SBI Annual Report?
Despite regulatory uncertainties still revolving around Ripple / XRP, the most recent annual report by SBI seemed to be extremely bullish for Ripple and especially XRP cryptocurrency. The use case for XRP really seems to be coming to fruition within Money Tap developments. Money Tap is essentially powered by XRP and it seems SBI has big plans on both the business and retail side for around the clock money transfers.
As mentioned in a previous report, XRP price has been on a tear the last 30 days. XRP USD has skyrocketed nearly +30% the last month and trades at $0.2791 at the time of this reporting. With the SBI annual report coming out in the new year, it could be one of the catalyst fueling XRP price. It’s ultimately impossible to know whether or not the report is having any implications on XRP price. High net worth shareholders will typically express interest in annual reports to see how their “investment” is doing and where it may be heading, which could have resulted in additional eyes on Ripple.
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