Sakina Juzar

TOKYO: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), second of the three largest banks in Japan, has announced new ventures into digital asset businesses. This includes non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 platforms. The company will undertake this project in partnership with Hashport, a group that offers tokenization and listing services in Japan, to launch a token business lab in order to experiment with these new technologies. 

The crypto and digital assets business has increasingly become a field of interest for many traditional banking companies around the world. In a press release, SMBC talks about its long-term goal; encourage the spread of the token business in Japan and also establish a division to offer digital custody services.

The company, with a unified presence of 463 branches around the world, aims to achieve this goal by incorporating its business knowledge and Hashport’s Web3 technical solutions to build a service platform. The business token lab, according to the press release, will “engage in surveys, research, and demonstration experiments related to the promotion of the token business.”

However, this venture aims to bring more than just one outcome. The press release states that this step aims to offer  “commercialization support and consulting services to customers considering the token business, including the issuance of NFTs.”

The SMBC group is contemplating issuing its own token business in the future, by seeking advantage of its unified international presence and widespread user interface. 

This comes after several Japanese companies, who have also launched initiatives in this field, including Rakuten; an online retail company that launched its own NFT in February. Following that, in May, a subsidiary of the group also announced it would partner with Bitbank, a Japanese crypto exchange company, to provide cryptocurrency custody services for several institutions.