SBI Holding, the investment arm of one of Japan’s leading venture capital firms, is trialing a crypto coin to be used for retail purchases.

According to the press release issued by SBI Holdings in collaboration with tech startup Orb and fintech company Glory, the coin is called “S coin,” and will allow charge and settlement on a smartphone.

For the trial, SBI has installed the S Coin platform on an automatic cash machine designed by Glory. The machine will allow shoppers to use credit cards to top up their smartphone wallet balances with S Coins which can then be used to make purchases at "eating and drinking establishments." SBI employees will test the functionality during the trial period at locations around the headquarters in Tokyo.

“After that, we will promote consideration of electronic currency settlement, such as enabling settlement with Glory's products … SBIH, Orb [and] Glory will create a cashless society by offering various settlement infrastructure, looking to the fintech market that has been created by changes in users' payment devices and technological innovation accompanying the spread of smartphones in recent years,” the announcement states.

The trial period is designed, according to the press release, to “verify whether we can meet the needs of various users envisioned.”

The S Coin platform has been designed for the distribution of digital assets that can be customized for specific purposes and is based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) developed by Orb.

According to Orb's website, their blockchain technology is built to deliver “fast, frictionless commerce with configurable coin economies on a distributed ledger platform.” The goal of the platform is to ensure it is “secure, scalable, and easy-to-integrate into enterprise networks.”

President of Orb, Mamoru Fujimoto and SBIH President and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao are looking to the future and “through this demonstration experiment, would like to study further possibilities and usefulness of blockchain.”