The Asia-Pacific partnership of Ripple and SBI Holdings, known as SBI Ripple Asia Co., Ltd. (SBI Ripple), JCB, Credit Saison Co., Ltd., and Mitsui Sumitomo Card Co., Ltd announced today they will lead and establish a “Consortium of Payment Card Industries utilizing Blockchain Technology.”

The new credit card consortium has already developed a new payments app powered by Ripple’s blockchain technology that enables real-time payments using a phone number or QR code.

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) has the potential to enhance the stability, flexibility, and efficiency of financial institution systems not only for virtual currency use but also for a wide range of applications.

In the card industry consortium established, in addition to virtual currency issue and point management, it is expected to be utilized in various applications such as identity verification, sharing/fraud prevention of illegal transactions and single sign-on.

Each card industry company carries out various initiatives related to FinTech, the card consortium to be established in January 2018 has the aim of researching basic cross-cutting technology and establishing a common foundation for the use of distributed ledger technology. It will also investigate new financial infrastructure utilizing advanced technology such as artificial intelligence.

The SBI Ripple Team said:

“We actively promote partnerships with companies with advanced technology in Japan and overseas to realize more efficient work of participating companies, realize a highly convenient payment environment through improvement of user experience, etc., a society based on a cashless society We will try to reduce costs and improve productivity.”