The Japanese conglomerate SBI Holdings, Inc. (TYO:8473) announced today that it will be the latest firm to join the  blockchain consortium led by R3 CEV LLC. As a group whose main operation channel is the internet, SBIH will join the global initiative to increase the efficiency of financial markets by using blockchain technology, and proactively consider applying blockchain technology to the financial services of the SBI Group.

R3 already consists of 42 financial institutions from around the world, after in December 2015 a dozen banks joined the consortium including BMO Financial Group, Danske Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Natixis, Nomura, Northern Trust, OP Financial Group, Banco Santander, Scotiabank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, U.S. Bancorp and Westpac.

The latest company to join explains its motivation by saying that as a FinTech pioneer in Japan, SBIH has been offering a wide range of financial services since its foundation by using the internet. All the SBI Group companies are promoting the introduction of new technologies in an effort to further increase customer convenience, with the aim of offering unique services in each business field, and differentiating themselves from other companies.

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In January R3 announced the completion of a distributed ledger experiment with Ethereum involving eleven of the world’s biggest banks, including Barclays, BMO Financial Group, Credit Suisse, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC, Natixis, Royal Bank of Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, UniCredit and Wells Fargo.