Ondo Finance and SBI Group, one of Japan’s largest financial conglomerates, announced a strategic partnership on July 16, 2026, agreeing to tokenize Japanese equities onchain and settle them through SBI’s JPYSC stablecoin.
Key Takeaways
- Ondo Finance and SBI Group will tokenize Japanese equities onchain, with instruments issued by Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited, according to Ondo Finance.
- SBI Group will settle and collateralize Ondo’s tokenized assets in JPYSC, its own yen stablecoin, extending its tokenization push.
- SBI Group will distribute Ondo’s tokenized products across its own group ecosystem in Japan, according to SBI Group.
- The push builds on SBI’s backing of a JPYC stablecoin retail trial at Lawson convenience stores.
- SBI’s chairman cast the tie-up as part of building “a global corridor for digital assets,” framing it as one pillar of a broader tokenization push rather than a one-off product deal.
What Happened?
Ondo Finance, described in the announcement as the largest tokenizer of stocks globally, and SBI Group confirmed a strategic partnership to tokenize and distribute Japanese equities onchain, per Ondo Finance. The tokenized instruments will be issued by Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited, the entity Ondo already uses to issue its US equity products.
SBI’s JPYSC stablecoin becomes the settlement and collateral asset for Ondo’s tokenized assets under the agreement. The two firms also agreed to cross-promote each other’s products and services through their respective customers, channels, and strategic partners.
Ian De Bode, CEO of Ondo Finance said:
Ondo’s Model Just Flipped
Ondo built its business tokenizing US equities and Treasuries in dollar terms, positioning itself as the largest tokenizer of stocks globally. This deal reverses that flow. Instead of bringing US assets to the world, Ondo is bringing a new country’s assets onchain, settled in that country’s own currency.
We’re excited to announce a partnership with SBI Group, one of Japan’s leading financial institutions.
— Ondo Finance (@OndoFinance) July 16, 2026
The collaboration covers tokenizing Japanese assets with distribution across the SBI ecosystem, and settlement using the JPYSC stablecoin.
Ondo CEO Ian De Bode on the… pic.twitter.com/Kp4twvDeZo
Ondo Global Markets (BVI) Limited will issue the Japanese equity instruments, the same legal wrapper Ondo already uses for its US products. Settlement now runs through JPYSC rather than the dollar-stablecoin plumbing underpinning those existing products, a structural change that ties Ondo’s infrastructure to a yen rail for the first time.
Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President and CEO of SBI Holdings said:
SBI’s Bigger Digital-Asset Play
SBI is not treating this as a one-off product deal. Its chairman framed the partnership as one step toward forming “a global corridor for digital assets,” a group-wide push into tokenized infrastructure.
SBI is spreading its digital-asset push across multiple partners and rails. It is stacking relationships across infrastructure, settlement, and distribution, letting each compete for volume inside its own ecosystem.
Ondo gains a distribution shortcut it could not build alone. SBI Group will distribute Ondo tokenized assets through the SBI Group ecosystem, reaching SBI’s brokerage and banking relationships without a standalone Japan sales operation. SBI and Ondo say they aim to build a bridge between Japan’s capital markets and the global tokenized economy, expanding access to Japanese assets for investors worldwide and laying the groundwork for yen-denominated settlement onchain.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
This deal reads as a template shift, not just a market entry announcement. Ondo has spent its short history proving that US equities and Treasuries can move onchain in dollar terms. Doing the same for Japanese equities, settled in yen through SBI’s own stablecoin, tests whether tokenized equity rails can work outside the dollar-stablecoin model they were built around.
The bigger signal sits in SBI’s pattern, not Ondo’s. A conglomerate that casts an equity tokenization deal as building “a global corridor for digital assets” is signalling a multi-partner strategy, not picking one winner. That spreads SBI’s bet across more relationships without guaranteeing any single one becomes the dominant rail, and the real test is whether JPYSC clears meaningful settlement volume from here.
