On account of increasing workers’ mobility and other relevant factors, the public need for fast, secure, and cheap payment infrastructure is increasingly growing. Owing to Japan’s aged population, it is one of the top countries that recruit employees from all around the globe.
According to the data, Japan is currently hosting 1.72 million foreign workers. The numbers have grown drastically during the last five years as in 2015 Japan had 0.9 million workers and since then the figures have almost doubled.
As a consequence of the upper mentioned scenario, the country’s need for an efficient cross-border payment network is pretty obvious.
SBI Group, foreign remittances and Ripple:
Realizing the opportunity Japan’s SBI Group is capitalizing on the market rather sufficiently. It has been in a partnership with one of the world’s leading cross-border payment network providers, RippleNet, since 2016.
Ripple labs’ subsidiary RippleNet is assisting SBI Remit[SBI’s subsidiary] built a cheap and frictionless remittance network in the country.
SBI partners with Hamamatsu Iwata Bank:
Most recently, in the process of building a nationwide remittance network[based on RippleNet’s ODL], SBI has partnered with Hamamatsu Iwata Bank; one of Japan’s leading baking institutions.
The partnership is meant to provide Hamamatsu Iwata Bank with adequate tech support to help the institution built its own remittance network. SBI stated in the press release:
“Our mission is to provide financial services centered on remittances to foreign residents, and we use Ripple’s distributed ledger technology, which is characterized by speed of deposit and low fees.”
Ripple in Japan:
Over the last couple of years, Ripple has become a major shareholder in Japan’s remittance market. At one point in time Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse stated that because of Ripple’s partnership with SBI, Japan is “one of their fastest-growing markets” and considering the non-sufficient environment for the company in the US, they are considering Japan as their next base.