BI Intelligence This story was delivered to BI Intelligence " Fintech Briefing " subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here . In May of this year , Japan made some regulatory changes to try and encourage the development of its fintech industry. These included the reduction of investment restrictions for banks that want to invest in fintechs, and the creation of a requirement that virtual currency exchanges be registered with the regulator. Recently, we’ve seen further signs Japan wants to encourage fintech in the country, and that its strategy is working. Japan’s Central Bank is open to using fintech. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda hosted a seminar on fintech this week, and said that the bank is ready to start investigating and promoting fintech, given its potential impact on central banking, according to Reuters. Kuroda also noted that the bank may start to use fintech in its own operations in the future. Further regulatory changes. Last month, a governmental advisory council — called the Financial System Council — started a working group to explore ways to make bank data and systems more accessible to fintechs. The EU already has regulation in place that will soon require banks to enable registered fintechs to access their systems. A new bank consortium to leverage blockchain. Ripple, the US fintech that uses blockchain technology for payments and settlement, entered into a joint venturein January with Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings. It’s called SBI Ripple Asia, and last week it announced the creation of a consortium of 15 Japanese banks, which will build a platform using Ripple technology to enable instant national and cross-border payments. It plans to expand the consortium to 30 banks and launch the service in spring 2017. Japan is diving headlong into the most profound era […]
