SBI Holdings and its subsidiary, SBI Investment announced that they decided to make an additional investment in Ripple Labs Inc., which developes and provides Ripple Connect, a module that processes real time international payments for banks.

Following the first investment in Ripple in January, 2016, SBI Group will make an additional investment as the Group believes further growth of settlement business for financial institutions in Asia through SBI Ripple Asia which is a joint venture between SBI and Ripple.

The US-based Ripple Labs announced third-party allocation of new shares. The company will raise about 55 million USD from allotees including FinTech Fund operated by SBI Investment, Standard Chartered Bank and Siam Commercial Bank.

The Ripple Connect is a solution to connect the internal systems of banks to the decentralized Ripple Consensus and realize low transaction cost and instant process for money transfer without intermediate banks.

15 of the top 50 global banks introduced the Ripple Connect and over 30 banks have completed proving test of Ripple Connect. It was also announced that 6 more financial institutions participate the Ripple’s settlement global network.

Ripple and SBI Group established SBI Ripple Asia in May and plans to form a consortium with 15 Japanese financial institutions in October, 2016. The consortium will develop a centralized settlement platform of foreign exchange and domestic exchange utilizing Ripple Connect in March, 2017.

(Source: SBI Holdings )

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