TL;DR Breakdown
- Ripple labs complete investment in SBI Holdings subsidiary.
- MoneyTap wants to connect 20 Japanese banks before the end of the year.
Ripple Labs, the San Francisco-based payment company, has officially completed an investment into a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, MoneyTap. This completes a process that was started as far back as October 2020, where both firms had set sight on developing new features and services to serve the burgeoning users of the app better.
Due to this new development, Eric van Miltenburg and Emi Yoshikawa, both directors at Ripple, would be joining the MoneyTap team. The Japanese firm also has 38 other shareholders apart from the crypto company.
MoneyTap looks to connect 20 banks before the year ends
Before the end of the year, it is expected that the RippleNet powered MoneyTap app would have connected 20 banking institutions. Presently, the app is expecting to connect three banks before the end of next month.
As time goes by, it is also expected that the app introduces strict Know-Your-Customer processes. This KYC process would be a biorecognition-based digital identity. This is to keep up with the possible regulatory demands that might spring up with the app usage.
The overall goal of MoneyTap is to sign up all members of the Japan Bank Consortium. The app was developed through a joint partnership between Ripple Labs and SBI Holdings in 2016.
Japan is one of Ripple’s biggest markets
Ripple has found the Japanese market favorable to its business as the authorities clarified that its native token, XRP, is not recognized as a security.
According to a report, the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) said that the XRP token does not fulfill the criteria of being called security under the country’s laws. The agency went on to clarify that instead, it regards the token as a crypto asset.
This is one of the possible defenses Ripple would be using in its lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States. The company has also mooted the possibility of moving its headquarters to this Asian country due to the clarity in its regulations.
