The decision to add XRP to SBI’s payment options comes as no surprise given that the two companies are on a joint venture to promote the use of XRP in Asia.
A used car exporting company in Japan has started accepting crypto as a form of payment. SBI Motors Japan, a cross-border e-commerce site, has revealed that it will now accept Bitcoin and XRP payments. According to the statement, this would make SBI the first cross-border e-commerce site in Japan to accept XRP as a payment option.
SBI to Support BTC and XRP Payments
The company provides information on used vehicles and oversees their export. Its export destinations include Kenya, Ireland, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Zambia and Tanzania, where it has an office. SBI exports an estimated 5000 automobiles per year. With the bulk of its market in emerging economies, SBI seeks to take advantage of the continual increase in crypto transactions in these regions.
“According to a study by Singapore-based exchange CooCoin, the number of transactions and users of virtual currencies, including bitcoin, in Africa surged about 15-fold and 25-fold in the year through January 2022. Crypto asset remittances use the blockchain (distributed ledger), so even if the banking system stops functioning, as long as the Internet is operational, remittances can continue to be used without being affected by the failure of an exchange, etc. This is also highly regarded, and is spreading as an alternative to traditional remittance methods,” the statement reads in part.
The use of crypto as a form of payment is expected to increase and in anticipation, the company plans to increase the “number of currencies that can be used for settlement in the future”. The cryptocurrency payments will be processed through the SBI Group’s crypto exchange SBI VCTrade Co., Ltd.
XRP’s Support for the Embattled Ripple
The decision to add XRP to SBI’s payment options comes as no surprise given that the two companies are on a joint venture to promote the use of XRP in Asia. SBI Holding’s support for Ripple Labs dates as far back as 2016 when the firms jointly formed a company called SBI Ripple Asia. In 2019 SBI started its XRP benefits program in which shareholders received XRP as a benefit of investment.
SBI CEO Yoshitaka Kitao also served as a member of Ripple’s board of directors from April 2019 to early 2021. Kitao’s support for XRP was evident in December 2020 when he pointed out that the asset, which has been been the subject of US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) scrutiny and a lawsuit, according to the Japanese financial regulator, was not a security but a crypto asset.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse believes that it is “not impossible” for the SEC lawsuit to be resolved this year. XRP is currently trading at $0.54, far from its January 7 2018 all-time high of $3.40.
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