SBI Holdings, Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director and CEO: Yoshitaka Kitao; “SBIH”) hereby announces that it will join blockchain consortium R3 led by R3 CEV LLC (Head Office: New York City, New York State, U.S.; CEO: David Rutter; “R3 CEV”), a U.S. FinTech company.
R3 CEV is a U.S. startup company that excels in blockchain technology, and is working on a global project towards establishing this technology.
The consortium R3, led by R3 CEV, currently consists of 42 financial institutions around the world (as of the end of February 2016). It is one of the world’s largest working groups that is trying to increase the efficiency of financial markets by using blockchain technology. Some of the financial institutions in the consortium are promoting the application of blockchain technology in financial services, and have already started performing experiments to verify the feasibility of such technology.
As a pioneer FinTech company in Japan, SBIH has been offering a wide range of financial services since its foundation by using the Internet. All the SBI Group companies are promoting the introduction of new technologies in an effort to further increase customer convenience, with the aim of offering unique services in each business field, and differentiating themselves from other companies.
As a financial group whose main channel is the Internet, SBIH will join the consortium R3 led by R3 CEV, the first such initiative in the world, and proactively consider applying blockchain technology to the financial services of the SBI Group.