SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial corporation, is to partner with R3, a Blockchain research consortium, to promote the use of the latter's blockchain, Corda, in Asia, according to Nikkei.
Promoting use of XRP
R3 CEO David Rutter told the news source that the entities are embarking on a "joint venture" to this end. Said he: "Europe is the most advanced in blockchain product development. The new joint venture will strengthen the Japanese language service, and promote adoption."
SBI Holdings, based in Hong Kong, is a subsidiary of SBI Group, a finance corporation based in Tokyo. R3, of New York, has around 200 finance companies as members, and as a result, has never wanted for investment money. SBI Holdings joined the consortium in March 2016. Corda is R3's blockchain service, initiated in November 2017. It is unique because it is designed to interact with cryptocurrencies created by central banks.
On Wednesday, R3 initiated a new payment service called 'Corda Settler’, with XRP to be the first settlement token supported. R3 says that the system works with any application that uses cryptographic proof of settlement.
XRP is the token managed by Ripple, the competitor of bank transfer company SWIFT.
All friends now
R3 and Ripple were until very recently opponents in court. The former sued the latter last year in three different US jurisdictions over 5 billion XRP tokens that it claimed it was owed under the terms of a former partnership. Ripple said that R3 was trying to change the terms of the deal. The sides came to an undisclosed settlement in September 2018.
On the other hand, SBI Holdings and Ripple have been working together in January 2016, when they created SBI Ripple Asia. Based in Tokyo, this entity promotes the use of Ripple products in the region.
SBI Group has a number of other subsidiaries too. One is SBI Virtual Currencies, which manages a cryptocurrency exchange called VCTRADE, and another is SBI Crypto Investments, which recently announced plans to open a derivatives-trading platform, and a Bitcoin mining operation, which was first announced in October 2017.
VCTRADE was first announced in April 2018, and it was originally only going to accept Payments in XRP. However, the company added some other major cryptocurrencies the following month.
