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Japan's financial services giant SBI Holdings has announced that it will offer shareholders the option to receive Ripple’s native token, XRP, as a benefit.
XRP is currently the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and trading at $0.25 at the time of writing.
According to the official announcement dated Jan. 31, shareholders can either choose to receive the benefit in XRP or the products sold by SBI’s subsidiary, SBI Alapromo Co.
As per the details, shareholders holding 100 to less than 1,000 shares as of March 31, 2020, or shareholders holding 1,000 or more shares and holding for less than one year can choose either 2,000 yen worth of XRP or Alapromo’s products, including health supplements and processed food.
On the other hand, Shareholders who have been holding shares for more than one year and have 1,000 or more shares in the shareholder registry as of March 31, 2020, can choose either 8,000 yen worth of XRP or Alapromo’s products, including health supplements, processed food, and cosmetics.
“Only the residents of Japan who can hold an account or newly open an account with our subsidiary SBI VC Trade Co., Ltd. can select the crypto asset XRP as a shareholder benefit. You will also need to apply, so details will be announced separately,” SBI said.
The SBI Group has been working to establish its digital asset ecosystem from early 2016. Along with its subsidiaries, it has been backing a number of blockchain-related companies, including Ripple, Elliptic, Securitize, OwlTing, Templum, CoolBitX, and others. It has also launched its own digital asset exchange, VCTRADE.
The financial services behemoth also signed a contract with enterprise software firm R3 to establish a joint venture company. In addition, its joint venture with blockchain startup Ripple, called SBI Ripple Asia, received a payments license in September 2018 to launch the blockchain-based MoneyTap app.
