The Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings is considering to pay shareholder dividends in the form of XRP tokens. This news comes following the same practice being implemented by SBI’s subsidiary MorningStar.

Earlier this year MorningStar started offering its shareholders dividends in XRP. The CEO of SBI, Yoshitaka Kitao revealed that the company is now considering to follow suit. With plan to launch the opt-in program during the fiscal year ending in March 2020.

XRP dividends grew SBI’s cryptocurrency business

MorningStar Japan, an independent financial investment research firm, first decided to incorporate XRP based dividends in August 2019. They stated that they will be offering its shareholders that hold a minimum of 100 shares, 30 XRP.

The launch of XRP dividends on MorningStar lead to a growing number of daily applications for SBI VC Trade, SBI’s cryptocurrency exchange.

Ripple and SBI have formed a strong partnership

In the past, these two firms have worked closely. As SBI Holdings is an active partner of Ripple through their joint venture SBI Ripple Asia. This venture was formed in order to promote the use of XRP in the Asian financial markets in 2016.

SBI emphasized in a financial report late October 2019, the increasing importance of Ripple’s technology. Noting its use cases in SBI’s remittance division. As well as the development of Ripple’s xCurrent based remittances.

Kitao was appointed as an executive of Ripple Labs earlier this April. There his purpose will be to: “further promote blockchain and digital asset utilization at financial institutions in Japan and Asia, and strive to develop financial services with high customer benefit.”

