Through a press release on 9th May 2022, Japan-based SBI Motor has announced that it will start accepting Bitcoin (BTC) and Ripple (XRP) payments for its cross-border e-commerce site for used cars.
SBI Motor Japan is a subsidiary of the Japanese major conglomerate known as SBI Holdings that employs over 9000 people globally working in the fields of asset management, environmental energy, financial services and biotechnology-related businesses.
The move appears to be step one in a comprehensive plan that will see the other subsidiaries within the SBI Group also accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment to tap into the wide variety of unbanked people currently excluded from the world economy.
In the press release, SBI referred to a 2017 World Bank study that showed that 1.7 billion people were unbanked with a vast majority of these residing in the emerging markets of African countries that SBI Group sells to.
SBI Motors sells over 5000 used cars annually to African countries including Uganda and Kenya but also stretches its reach to Ireland in Europe and the Bahamas Islands of the Caribbean.
As a company with such strong global dealings in emerging markets characterized by limited technological capacity, high fees on remittances and transactions, tax, corruption and bureaucratic delays, it was prudent for SBI to find ways to bring unbanked populations within the fold.
With reference to Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, CooCoin’s study, SBI noted in its press release that Africa has witnessed a 15-fold and 25-fold increase in total cryptocurrency transactions and the total number of users respectively throughout January 2022 from the previous year.
Cryptocurrencies were thus looked at as a more viable option without the need for banks or exorbitant transaction fees making them a better cross-border savings technology allowing more users to participate in the global economy quicker.
“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 exchange etc,” SBI said.
According to SBI, the Bitcoin and Ripple payments will be facilitated by the crypto exchange subsidiary of the financial group known as SBI VCTrade Company, Ltd.
On top of security measures through screening of clients and users, the platform will adhere to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations as outlined in various set international standards.
The development makes SBI Motor Japan the first cross-border e-commerce platform in Japan to add XRP as a payment option.
“We will continue to expand our services to meet the needs of our customers, and will not stop with SBI Motor Japan’s support for crypto-asset settlements,” the company added concerning its plans to add other crypto assets to the list of supported payments.
This all comes at a time when major firms and corporations like Gucci and Equinox have also continued to add crypto payments in a bid to meet their customers’ growing demands.