SBI Holdings and Solana Partner to Build Japan Finance

SBI Holdings announced on July 13, 2026, that the Switzerland-based Solana Foundation would join SBI R3 Japan — a joint venture with Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group — with the entity to be renamed SBI Solana Global and tasked with building yen-backed stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, and cross-border payment infrastructure on the Solana network. The announcement, reported by The Block's institutional stablecoin coverage, marks the formal activation of a memorandum of understanding the two firms signed in August 2025.

The immediate commercial step attached to the partnership is a yen stablecoin lending product. SBI VC Trade began accepting applications on July 13 for a Japanese yen-denominated stablecoin lending service, offering an initial annualized rate of 3% on JPYSC lent for 12 weeks. SBI introduced the trust-structured yen stablecoin JPYSC on June 24, 2026, giving the lending product a live underlying asset from day one. The 3% yield and 12-week tenor are the only disclosed commercial terms; the announcement does not specify maximum lending capacity, collateral requirements, or counterparty eligibility criteria.

The Solana Foundation's involvement brings institutional network metrics into the picture. By March 2026, total RWA value on the Solana network had crossed $2 billion, with RWA lending deposits reaching $1.2 billion — leading all blockchain networks at that point — and on-chain RWA holders reaching a record 182,000. The Foundation also launched the Solana Developer Platform enterprise API, an interface aggregating more than 20 infrastructure providers, in March 2026. On March 17, SOL received classification as a digital commodity under federal law through joint SEC and CFTC interpretive guidance covering 16 crypto assets, a regulatory development that institutional counterparties in Japan had been monitoring before committing to the network.

The SBI–Solana deal does not exist in isolation within SBI's digital-asset stack. On June 24, 2026, SBI Holdings and SBI VC Trade, a licensed Electronic Payment Instruments Exchange Service Provider, launched Ripple USD (RLUSD) in Japan through the VCTRADE platform, available to both institutional and retail customers. Japan's Financial Services Agency had approved RLUSD as an electronic payment instrument under the Payment Services Act, classifying it as a new category intended for foreign-issued stablecoins meeting FSA equivalence, reserve, and supervisory standards. RLUSD, which launched in late 2024, had reached $1.7 billion in market capitalization by the time of its Japanese debut. That approval followed the FSA's June 1, 2026 rule update, which created a formal pathway for qualifying foreign stablecoins to operate through licensed Electronic Payment Instrument Exchange Service Providers — a framework under which USDC qualifies but USDT largely does not.

SBI's tokenized-asset infrastructure extends further. Startale Group and SBI Holdings launched Strium, a blockchain platform providing exchange infrastructure for tokenized securities and RWA trading in Asia, built to support both spot and derivatives settlement of tokenized equities and RWA-linked instruments. That platform, covered by Finance Magnates' RWA exchange analysis, adds a settlement layer that could eventually interface with the Solana-based infrastructure being developed under SBI Solana Global, though no integration timeline or technical specification has been disclosed.

The announcement does not disclose the capital allocated to SBI Solana Global, the governance split between SBI Holdings and the Solana Foundation within the renamed entity, or the regulatory approval pathway for any tokenized RWA products the venture intends to issue. It does not identify a specific real estate asset class, an institutional client mandate, or a live cross-border payment corridor. The product sequencing beyond the JPYSC lending service — including when tokenized RWA instruments will be available and under which regulatory classification — has not been addressed in the available materials.

What the announcement concretely establishes is that SBI Solana Global now exists as a named entity with a stated mandate covering yen stablecoins, RWA tokenization, and payments, and that a JPYSC lending product at 3% annualized for 12 weeks is open for applications as of July 13, 2026. The announcement does not establish a launched RWA product, a licensed cross-border payment service, or a disclosed capital commitment from either party to the renamed joint venture.