A consortium of 15 Japanese banks are to work with blockchain joint venture SBI Ripple Asia, to build a new payments platform promising round-the-clock real-time settlement for cross-border and domestic funds transfers.
Ripple announced its joint venture with Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings early this year with the aim of driving the adoption of its distributed ledger technology across Asian markets.
The two companies proclaim that Ripple's software stack will slash 90% of the fees currently paid by banks for performing cross-border transactions and pave the way for the arrival of real-time domestic and cross-border payments.
In July, Mizuho Financial Group (MHFG) became one of the first Japanese banks to pilot blockchain technology for cross-currency settlement using Ripple.
SBI Ripple Asia projects that the 15 inaugural members will increase the size of the consortium to 30 banks, and that the new service will go live in spring of 2017.