Japan’s largest financial group launches three-month trial of cryptocurrency rewards tied to savings accounts
SBI Shinsei Bank, the banking arm of Japan’s SBI Holdings, will begin a three-month trial campaign on June 10 that converts 20% of depositor interest payments into cryptocurrency vouchers redeemable for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or XRP, according to reporting by Nikkei.
The program applies to fixed-term deposits and savings accounts with maturities ranging from three months to five years. A depositor holding 300,000 yen would earn approximately 500 yen in vouchers, while a 30 million yen deposit would generate roughly 20,000 yen in vouchers. Vouchers are redeemable at market rates at the time of execution.
Customers must open an SBI VC Trade account, the crypto business unit of SBI Group, to exchange vouchers. The trial period will inform a full program launch planned for fall 2026. SBI Shinsei Bank currently manages 4.33 million individual deposit accounts.
The initiative represents SBI Group’s strategy to funnel retail depositors into its cryptocurrency ecosystem. The bank has accelerated crypto product launches over the past four months. In March, SBI VC Trade introduced a retail USDC lending service. In May, the group launched the SBI Visa Crypto Card, which converts spending rewards into BTC, ETH, or XRP. In February, SBI Shinsei and SBI VC Trade ran an XRP voucher campaign offering up to 20,000 yen per customer.
SBI Group is pursuing multiple avenues to expand its crypto footprint. SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities are jointly developing cryptocurrency investment trusts for individual investors. The group partnered with Startale Group to build a blockchain infrastructure for tokenized stocks and launched JPYSC, a yen-backed stablecoin. SBI submitted a letter of intent to acquire a stake in Bitbank, a regulated Japanese crypto exchange, as a consolidated subsidiary.
On the institutional side, SBI filed for a combined Bitcoin and XRP exchange-traded fund on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, targeting $32 billion in combined assets within three years. The group also filed for a “Digital Gold Crypto” ETF allocating 51% to gold and 49% to digital assets.
The deposit voucher program tests whether traditional banking relationships can serve as acquisition channels for crypto services. Success in the trial will determine whether the fall rollout proceeds as planned and whether the model scales across SBI Shinsei’s deposit base.
