Japanese ecommerce website allows crypto payments

Japanese used-car export firm, SBI Motor Japan, has announced that its ecommerce site is now going to accept crypto payments

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Shutterstock

SBI Motor Japan has announced that it will start accepting Bitcoin (BTC) and Ripple (XRP) as payments for used cars on its ecommerce website. These transactions will be settled on the SBI VC Trade Co. Ltd, a cryptocurrency exchange owned by the SBI Group.

SBI Motor Japan is a subsidiary of SBI Africa Co Ltd. The ecommerce website provides information on used automobiles to emerging countries around the world, including Tanzania, Zambia, Kenya, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, the Caribbean, and Ireland, which are major export destinations.

In a notice dated May 9, 2022, SBI Motor Japan stated, “In anticipation of the growing demand for remittances using crypto assets, we plan to increase the number of currencies that can be used for settlement in the future.”

SBI VC Trade Co Ltd complies with AML requirements and anti-terrorism financing methods as defined in international standards, and examines business partners and clients as part of a screening process to protect its users.

According to SBI’s notice, this initiative marks the first time XRP cryptocurrency will be rolled out at a cross-border ecommerce site in Japan. This decision positively impacted Ripple, which went through a lawsuit filed in 2020 for selling unregistered securities in the form of XRP.

In SBI’s notice, a study from the World Bank states that 1.7 billion adults worldwide have no access to banks. Most of them concentrated in the African continent.

An additional study compiled from the Singapore-based crypto-currency CooCoin was cited in the notice that Africa had witnessed a 15-fold increase in total cryptocurrency transactions. Not only did transactions increase, but the total number of users also multiplied by 25 in January 2022 over the previous year.

This feature will provide accessibility to a large number of unbanked users currently excluded from the global economy. Moreover, cryptographic asset transfers use blockchain; even if the banking system ceases to function, as long as the Internet is operational, remittances may continue to be used without being affected by a breakdown in the exchange.

SBI ended its notice by stating, “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.”

Shashank is the founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist. Twitter: @bhardwajshash

Crypto wallet users are warned as scammers might get active during the potential Ethereum hard fork