Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings is actively deepening its integration with the XRP ecosystem through a calculated new move.
These strategic initiatives aim to drive both retail crypto onboarding and enterprise developer adoption.
SBI offers $64 million in bonds with XRP rewards
On February 20, SBI announced a 10 billion yen ($64.5 million) blockchain-based security token bond offering that will award XRP to individual investors.
The three-year bond, branded as SBI START bond, will be officially priced on March 10 and will be issued on March 24. It promises traditional bond investors an indicative annual interest rate of 1.85% to 2.45%.
“The SBI Group believes that the continued development of the ST bond market in Japan will revitalize the capital market and, in turn, contribute to the sustainable growth of the real economy.”
However, XRP rewards serve a much deeper purpose than simple revenue enhancement.
To be eligible for virtual currency payments that will be distributed annually until 2029, domestic investors must open and authenticate their accounts with the company’s virtual currency brokerage subsidiary, SBI VC Trade, by May 11.
By mandating this important step, SBI executes a highly efficient customer acquisition strategy.
The company leverages safe, regulated yen-denominated bonds to funnel conservative personal funds into its digital asset platform. Once these users enter the ecosystem, SBI can aggressively cross-sell spot trading, staking, and margin services.
SBI supports XRPL-focused startups through new partnership
At the same time, SBI Ripple Asia signed a memorandum of understanding with Asia Web3 Alliance Japan (AWAJ).
The partners aim to establish a professional venture studio model that provides practical technical and regulatory support to startups in the region.
“In this initiative, the two companies will work together as ‘technical support partners’ to provide technical support to companies aiming to realize financial services using blockchain,” the companies said.
Importantly, this initiative explicitly requires these startups to build their financial services natively on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
Unlike rival networks such as Ethereum and Solana, which boast organic developer momentum and robust smart contract activity, XRPL does not have a thriving decentralized finance ecosystem.
However, blockchain networks have recently introduced several new features designed to interest institutions.
By funding venture studios that are clearly tied to the ledger, SBI is essentially looking to further the momentum of developers on the blockchain network.
The company recognizes that if startups don’t actively build on the chain, the network will remain underutilized for complex financial applications.
“Through our collaboration, we will support the creation of practical use cases using XRPL that will contribute to the financial and industrial fields, and aim to realize financial use cases originating in Japan that can be applied globally.”
