Japan’s financial conglomerate, the SBI Group, is looking to establish its presence in the areas of crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi). In a fresh development, the firm has partnered with Chainlink to explore service offerings in these advance financial sectors.
Exploring usecases around stablecoins as well as tokenized funds and real world assets will be major areas of focus that this partnership will concentrate on, an announcement statement said on Monday, August 25.
Chainlink, in its part, will give the SBI Group an access to its proprietary features like Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and SmartData (NAV). The aim is to let the Tokyo-headquartered company unlock secondary market liquidity and improve the operational efficiency of tokenized assets.
Commenting on the development, the chief of the SBI Holdings, Yoshitaka Kitao asserted that the company aims to drive a widespread adoption of digital assets in Japan.
“Chainlink is a natural partner for SBI complementing our financial footprint with their market leading interoperability and reliability onchain. With our combined strengths, we are delighted to be working on powering compliant cross-border transactions using stablecoins,” Kitao, who serves as the chairman, president, and CEO of SBI Holdings noted.
This partnership with Chainlink adds to the growing list of blockchain firms that the SBI Group has been cracking similar deals with. The SBI Group includes financial services giant SBI Holdings and its crypto exchange subsidiary SBI VC Trade Co., Ltd.
Just last week, the SBI Group teamed up with Ripple to launch the RLUSD stablecoin in Japan by next year. The company has formed a similar partnership with Circle to promote the use of the USDC stablecoin in the country.