Japan’s SBI VC Trade Expands Stablecoin Services With 3 Percent Lending Yield

Tokyo-based SBI VC Trade has announced that applications for a Japanese yen-stablecoin lending service with an initial rate of 3 percent per year on JPYSC lent for 12 weeks will be accepted beginning Thursday. Customers will start lending JPYSC to SBI VC Trade, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, on Thursday and get back their tokens with the lending fee, according to a press release. Using the offered yield, the gross return on investment during the 12 weeks will be 0.69 percent. 

Programme Expands Utility of Yen Stablecoin Beyond Payments

The company claims that the return on this investment is more than 0.325 percent to 1 percent per year, offered by SBI in the case of ordinary yen savings accounts. However, it should be noted that it is not a bank deposit, it is not insured, and cannot be canceled early. Loans extended by JPYSC to SBI VC Trade will similarly not meet the statutory requirements for asset segregation, thus customers may lose all or some of their tokens in case the company folds, the statement adds. 

The launch offers JPYSC a fresh use case, merely weeks after SBI launched the trust-enabled yen stablecoin on June 24, and regulated stablecoins move from payment systems to income-generating vehicles in Japan.

SBI touts it as the world's first service to enable lending of yen-stablecoins against passive yield generation. By offering yields that will exceed the usual annual rate of deposits in yen, SBI expects expansion from holders of yen stablecoins and said this would be crucial in achieving the future of on-chain finance.

SBI Holdings is independently developing the framework that it believes will one day take JPYSC outside of its platform and into the realm of a market for tokenised assets and cross-border payments. On Monday, SBI Holdings announced a strategic alliance with the Switzerland-based Solana Foundation to develop an on-chain financial market in Japan. Under the agreement, Solana Foundation will be working with SBI R3 Japan, which will be rebranded as SBI Solana Global and will develop a growth strategy around the yen-pegged stablecoin.

Japan has been part of the stablecoin race for a long time now. The country had launched its first yen-backed digital currency, JPYC, in October 2025. The stablecoin, which is created by Tokyo-based fintech company JPYC Inc., has a fixed 1:1 exchange rate with the yen and is fully backed one-to-one by Japanese yen held in government bonds and bank deposits. The launch positions Japan within the growing global stablecoin market, which has so far been dominated by dollar-pegged assets such as USDT and USDC.