- Ministry of Finance has given certification to SBI holdings.
- MoneyTap App enables consumers transact 24/7 using a phone number, QR code and bank account number.
- No exact date of release given but may be before this fall.
SBI Holdings has officially announced today that Japan’s Ministry of Finance has given it the certification that allows it to process electronic payments. With this approval, SBI Ripple Asia is now at liberty to launch a blockchain-based application dubbed “MoneyTap.” While it is not yet clear whether MoneyTap can process cryptocurrency-related payments, the application runs on Ripple’s distributed ledger technology to expedite payments between financial institutions.
Customers to Get Real-time Access to Their Money
SBI Ripple Asia is a partnership between blockchain technology developer Ripple and Japan’s tech giant SBI holdings. MoneyTap will become the first notable application consumer-ended application to run on the blockchain network. The App will enable its customers to access their money in real-time using a phone number, bank account number and QR code. However, there is not yet a sign of whether the new technology will support Ripple’s XRP coin.
Japanese banks run on Zengin, the country’s decades-old payment clearing platform that only enables domestic interbank money transfers between 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM and that comes with high banking fees. MoneyTap will, therefore, come as a relief to many bank customers who will now be able to access their money 24/7.
In June this year, the Japanese government ordered all businesses seeking to handle electronic payments to register with local finance bureaus. This is why SBI Ripple Asia had to follow this legal requirement to register MoneyTap as an electronic payment service. The MoneyTap application will run on both iOS and Android using Ripple’s blockchain technology.
MoneyTap was initially mentioned by the SBI Ripple Bank consortium that was launched in November 2016 that owns over 80 percent of Japan’s banking assets. When MoneyTap will eventually be launched, customers belonging to three members of the consortium, namely Suruga Bank, SBI Net Sumishin Bank and Resona Bank will be allowed to test run the service before it is finally rolled out to the rest of the 59 members belonging to the consortium.
Ripple Creating Ripples All Over the World
Spanish banking giant Banco Santander launched a Ripple-backed personal payment App in April for retail customers in the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Poland. The smartphone App allows for near-instant transfers and end-to-end payment tracking with transparent Forex fees that require only “3 clicks and 40 seconds” to complete using Ripple’s xCurrent enterprise blockchain software and not XRP.
The company states:
“SBI Ripple Asia will provide appropriate information to users in addition to the registration of electronic payment agency operators in order to ensure that the electronic payment agency business pertaining to “MoneyTap” will be properly implemented in the future.”
