Japan has long been one of Ripple’s most fertile markets. SBI’s investment in Ripple dates back to 2016, SBI Remit launched Japan’s first XRP-compatible international fund in 2021, and SBI VC Trade considers XRP one of its most popular assets.
When Ripple and SBI announced in August 2025 that SBI VC Trade planned to distribute RLUSD in Japan, the move read as a natural extension of an already deep local partnership.
A recent survey of 518 investment professionals in Japan, conducted by Nomura and Laser Digital between December 2025 and January 2026 and published on April 16, found that 63% of respondents identified potential applications for stablecoins, including treasury management, cross-border payments, crypto investments and tokenized securities.
In the denominations of JPY, USD and EUR, the stablecoins that attracted the highest institutional trust were those issued by major financial institutions.
Japan is perhaps Ripple’s friendliest testing ground and exactly where the limits of crypto-branded stablecoins become visible.
Why Japan should have been different
Ripple’s position in Japan goes beyond standard distribution agreements. SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture formed from SBI’s investment in Ripple in 2016, has been operating as part of Ripple’s regional infrastructure for almost a decade.
SBI Remit started using Ripple Payments in 2017 and expanded XRP-based remittance corridors to the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia in September 2023.
SBI VC Trade’s proprietary investor material describes XRP as one of the most popular crypto assets among clients.
That foundation gave Ripple something that most stablecoin issuers in Japan lack, namely pre-existing retail exposure, regulated local partners, and a remittance infrastructure already functioning on Ripple rails.
RLUSD entered this market with an institutional package that Ripple itself describes as enterprise-grade, fully backed by US dollar deposits, US Treasuries and cash equivalents, built around compliance and integrated into Ripple Payments for cross-border and treasury-like flows.
Nomura’s research complicates the reading, giving Ripple a strong hand. The trust premium that Japanese institutions grant to large financial institution issuers reflects a structural preference for well-known, supervised counterparties.
The FSA’s stablecoin framework restricts the issuance of digital money stablecoins to banks, money transfer service providers and trust companies, with redemption and protection requirements attached to each structure.
Bank-issued stablecoins provide protection equivalent to conventional bank deposits. Japan’s regulatory architecture naturally centers credibility around supervised financial entities. Ripple, regardless of its compliance stance, falls outside this category.
The competition is already building up
RLUSD’s planned distribution through SBI VC Trade, which is still described in late 2025 SBI investor materials as pending approval, falls within a field that Japan’s established financial institutions are actively developing.
In November 2025, MUFG Bank, Mizuho Bank, SMBC and Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Progmat announced an FSA-backed proof of concept for co-issuance of stablecoins and cross-border settlement.
SBI’s own material shows that USDC has already been approved in Japan through its relationship with Circle, that RLUSD will be commercialized once approved, and that a JPY-pegged stablecoin study is underway with SMBC.
That competitive picture reframes what RLUSD is actually competing for in Japan.
| Use case / market job | Likely confidence benefit |
|---|---|
| Cross-border payments | RLUSD/Ripple-linked infrastructure |
| International transfers | RLUSD/Ripple-linked infrastructure |
| Exchange liquidity | RLUSD/crypto-linked issuers |
| Treasury management | Major financial institution issuers |
| Tokenized securities settlement | Major financial institution issuers |
| Domestic business payments | Major financial institution issuers |
The open question is which types of issuers will capture the institutional use cases with the highest confidence and value, as Nomura’s figure of 63% puts adoption itself beyond question.
Treasury management, tokenized securities settlement, and domestic corporate payments are the use cases most sensitive to the identity of the issuer. Cross-border payments, exchange liquidity, and international money transfers are the use cases where Ripple’s existing infrastructure and RLUSD design are strongest.
Ripple has built its position in Japan through payments and remittances, and RLUSD’s rollout plan points in the same direction. Nomura’s trust data suggests that institutions are reaching out to issuers with balance sheets and deposit protections they already recognize for broader use cases.
Two paths from here
The bull case for RLUSD in Japan depends on how closely institutions actually apply the trust premium from Nomura’s research.
If Japanese institutions make a practical distinction between the issuer identity for domestic yen-denominated settlements and the issuer identity for USD-denominated cross-border infrastructure, RLUSD has a credible path.
Ripple Payments already routes international flows, SBI VC Trade already serves institutional crypto clients, and RLUSD, as a compatible USD stablecoin integrated into an existing cross-border payments network, could fill the role of USD settlement in Japan’s institutional stack without having to win the domestic trust competition outright.
In that scenario, RLUSD becomes a credible infrastructure for international use cases, while SBI’s parallel USDC and JPY stablecoins handle domestic demand.
Ripple’s business positioning would prove sufficient for the jobs it already occupies, even if it doesn’t expand into the more confident domestic settlement sector.
The bear case follows directly from Nomura data and the Japanese issuer structure.
If the trust premium for large financial institution issuers remains persistent in all cases of stablecoin use, RLUSD will remain secondary in the Japanese institutional market regardless of its compliance credentials.
Banks and trust companies that build their own stablecoin products have the deposit protection and regulatory familiarity that Nomura respondents seem to value.
RLUSD, however well packaged, arrives as a crypto networking product distributed through a local partner. This is a structure that Japanese institutions can still consider crypto-adjacent, outside the category of supervised financial entities that Nomura’s trust premium rewards.
In that outcome, RLUSD’s presence in Japan reflects its global positioning as useful for Ripple Payments flows and exchange liquidity, with domestic institutional settlement concentrated among supervised financial entities.
That would be a meaningful ceiling even in Ripple’s friendliest market.
Nomura’s formulation is ‘major financial institutions’. That distinction creates some room for non-bank regulated issuers to compete on trust grounds, especially money transfer service providers and trust companies that fall within Japan’s issuer authorization framework.
The 63% usage scenario reflects current institutional thinking among asset managers, family offices and public interest organizations.
That demand exists now and will first flow to products. The open variable is which products account for the largest share of trust-sensitive demand.
The broader framework
Ripple’s position in Japan gives the company an unusually useful perspective on the issue of stablecoin trust.
If RLUSD gains a sustainable institutional foothold in Japan despite Nomura’s research papers, it would demonstrate that compliance framing and local distribution can compete with issuer identity even in a bank-centric market.
If RLUSD is limited to the cross-border and crypto settlement avenues where Ripple already operates, it would confirm that trust in a payment network and trust in a stablecoin issuer are different, and that the Japanese institutional market keeps them separate.
The parallel build-out of the megabank stablecoin answers the same question from the other side. MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC are building stablecoins with the intention of competing in the domestic trust market themselves.
Japan is a preview of what the institutional stablecoin markets will look like as the financial establishment arrives with its own products, its own credibility as an issuer, and a regulatory framework designed around its own structure.