Japan’s SBI Holdings CEO Shares Latest Ripple Achievements

Kitao shows continued support for Ripple’s ODL service.

Japan’s SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao shared a blog post highlighting the recent successes of Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service in a tweet yesterday as SBI continues to champion the payments solution.

Ripple Expands On-Demand Liquidity to Nearly 40 Payout Markets, Adds Machine Learning Capabilities https://t.co/guMC0I0xcS

— 北尾吉孝 (@yoshitaka_kitao) November 22, 2022

Notably, the service provides liquidity for cross-border payments using XRP as a bridge currency. Moreover, unlike traditional settlement methods, transactions take only seconds and are significantly cheaper.

In the shared blog post, Ripple reveals that its ODL service now serves “nearly 40 payout markets.” Per a statement from Brooks Entwistle, SVP of Global Customer Success at Ripple, this represents about 90% of the forex markets.

It comes as the cross-border settlement solution gains momentum in regions like Africa, Argentina, Belgium, and Israel. In addition, customers of its fiat-based RippleNet service are also upgrading to the XRP-based solution.

As previously reported, Ripple is also looking to expand its services to Europe with a foothold in Ireland as it seeks a virtual asset service provider (VASP) license.

Furthermore, with the expansion of the ODL service, the company has introduced Machine Learning capabilities to scale the product.

“Ripple’s machine learning and automation efforts are focused on liquidity – the backbone of crypto and all of our enterprise-grade products,” said Devraj Varadhan, SVP of Engineering at Ripple. “We’re excited to launch several of those capabilities this year to scale ODL efficiently to serve more customers globally and to provide the best experience possible for our customers.”

It bears mentioning that SBI, one of Japan’s largest conglomerates, and Ripple have a long history. SBI has been one of the biggest drivers of XRP adoption in Asia. Notably, both firms even formed a joint venture called SBI Ripple Asia. In addition, Kitao served as a member of Ripple’s board from 2019 to 2021.

The Japanese conglomerate recently renewed its XRP international remittance service using ODL, pledging to strengthen the service and expand its use cases. In May, SBI Motor Japan became the first Japanese e-commerce platform to accept XRP for payments.

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