Singapore-headquartered enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) developer Whale has secured a $40 million Series C3 extension, bringing its total Series C funding to $100 million. The injection of capital is earmarked to accelerate the scale-up of its global enterprise AI deployments and deepen platform integrations. The latest funding round
Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed digital payment and marketing firm Digital Garage (TSE Prime: 4819) and its subsidiary Pocket Change have announced that their proprietary digital currency platform, "Pokepay," has been selected for a new regional tourism initiative in Osaka. The platform will power digital coupons for the "
Japanese financial services giant SBI Holdings and the Solana Foundation have entered into a strategic partnership to build an on-chain financial market originating from Japan, aiming to export Japanese stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) to Asian and global markets. As part of the agreement, the Solana Foundation
Japanese payments giant JCB has signed a memorandum of understanding with an affiliate of Circle Internet Group to explore the integration of stablecoin technology into its global payment network. The strategic alliance aims to merge Circle’s stablecoin and blockchain infrastructure—which includes USDC and EURC—with JCB’s extensive
Funds, a prominent Tokyo-based direct investment platform led by CEO Yuichiro Fujita, has launched its first European venture, the "Everest Leaseback Receivable-Backed Fund #1." The launch signifies a major geographical expansion for the platform, introducing Poland as its fourth international market following previous entries into Taiwan,
Infcurion and DCP have executed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly explore the social implementation of new financial services utilizing tokenized deposits. The strategic partnership aims to build a robust on-chain financial infrastructure designed to support "agentic commerce"—an emerging global trend where autonomous AI agents independently
SBI VC Trade, a consolidated cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary of SBI Holdings, announced the launch of "JPYSC Lending," marking Japan's first trust-based, Japanese Yen-denominated stablecoin lending service. Applications for the new asset-generation product will open on July 16, 2026, with the official lending period
SBI XDC Network APAC, a joint venture between Japan’s SBI Holdings and UAE-based TradeFinex Tech, has completed two major initiatives aimed at accelerating enterprise blockchain adoption across the Asia-Pacific region. The company successfully executed an online trade factoring pilot utilizing digital corporate IDs with TOPPAN, while simultaneously
Tokenization platform Progmat has successfully migrated its digital securities issuance and management infrastructure from the Corda 5 distributed ledger to an Avalanche L1 network. The infrastructure overhaul, dubbed "Project Keystone," transitions the entirety of Japan's leading security token platform—currently managing over ¥452 billion ($2.8
Welcome to the one hundred seventy-second edition of the Japan FinTech Observer. Despite an avalanche of stablecoin and tokenization announcements, which are a seasonal phenomenon ahead of the WebX conference, the headline news of the past week is the collapse of payment processor Zentoshin, which is suspected of falsifying
Japan’s financial landscape remains stubbornly dominated by indirect lending, a structural byproduct of chronic overbanking and historically low corporate demand for capital. However, a recent report by the NLI Research Institute argues that rising interest rates and the critical need to fund venture-backed growth demand a diversification of
A quarter-century after the Japanese government first introduced the slogan "from savings to investment" under the Koizumi administration in 2001, the structural composition of Japanese household assets remains largely unchanged. Despite ongoing government discussions to implement strict numerical targets aimed at pushing household assets into stocks, bonds,