Japanese Banking Giant SMBC To Set Foot in Digital Asset Business

With several traditional banking companies across the globe considering to enter the digital assets business, the Japanese banking giant Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), an institution that holds $2.1 trillion in assets and has over 463 branches across the world, has recently announced its plan enter the domain with Web3 and NFT projects.

To expand into the digital assets business, SMBC revealed that they are preparing to launch a token business lab with the help of blockchain startup HashPort, renowned for offering tokenization and listing services in Japan.

SMBC aims to combine its business knowledge with HashPort’s Web3 technical solutions to build an exclusive service platform. The bank further stated, “We aim to build an ecosystem involving many players in the NFT domain. We believe that these efforts will contribute to the promotion of Web3 in Japan.”

SMBC’s business token lab will “engage in surveys, research, and demonstration experiments related to the promotion of the token business,” as explained by the bank in the press release they shared recently. This also coincides with the company’s goal to boost the spread of the token business in Japan and establish a unit to offer digital custody services.

However, the services SMBC aims to offer are more than just digital custody services, as the company, after the collaboration with HashPort, also intends to provide “commercialization support and consulting services to customers considering the token business, including the issuance of NFTs.”

Moreover, SMBC is considering taking advantage of its global presence and large user base to issue its own token business in the future. However, they are not the first Japanese firm to enter the Web3 and NFT spaces.  Earlier, the financial giant, SBI, entered the space by acquiring an NFT firm and launching their NFT projects as SBINFT.