SBI Holdings announced plans to issue a ¥10 billion ($64.6m) unsecured digital bond, SBI START bonds, targeting consumers. The issuance on 24 March will match the largest previous Japanese digital bond issuances, including a green bond from Hitachi in 2023 and an MUFG digital bond in late 2025. Given the retail focus, there is a low minimum investment of ¥10,000 ($65).
The company is being quite strategic in structuring the bond, offering investors bonuses of XRP tokens. SBI first created a joint venture with Ripple almost a decade ago, and has offered dividends in XRP since at least 2019. A novel feature of the issuance is that, to receive the XRP bonus, domestic investors must have an account with its crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, helping to drive signups. The XRP bonuses will be paid in May this year, together with some of the interest payments due between 2027 and 2029.
SBI VC Trade is not the only group company involved in the issuance. The digital bonds are named after the private digital securities trading venue, START, which is similar to an ATS, and is part of the Osaka Digital Exchange. So far trading volumes on START have been very modest, averaging the equivalent of $15,375 daily in January, but these are still early days, and only a handful of real estate tokens have been listed so far. The SBI bond would be the first digital bond to trade on START. Additionally, the digital bond will sidestep Japan’s central securities depository (CSD), Japan Securities Depository Center (JASDEC), with SBI Securities as the sole underwriter.
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