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Japan FinTech Observer #179

Norbert Gehrke

Norbert Gehrke

— 7 min read
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Japan FinTech Observer #179

Welcome to the one hundred seventy-ninth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer.

Having reached Japan's Northernmost point today, I can confidently predict that things will only be going South for me over the next week or so. As for the carry trade, the AI trade, the oil price - I don't know!

Here is what we are going to cover this week (plus, links to an abundance of additional reading material):

  • Venture Capital & Private Markets: SMBC Asia Rising Fund and Singtel Innov8 back enterprise AI firm fileAI in drive for regional expansion; SBI Holdings secures 20% stake in Indonesia's Ajaib Group to expand digital asset footprint across Asia
  • Payments: Monex subsidiary Coincheck wins Japan’s second EPI license, clearing path for regulated USDC rollout; Japan’s Financial Services Agency launches 43-company pilot to test interbank tokenized deposit settlements, led by DCP, GMO Aozora Net Bank, and ABeam Consulting
  • Capital Markets: Exchanges censure Moomoo Securities Japan over NISA misrepresentations and compliance failures; Japan’s last onshore high-frequency trader Dharma Capital moved all its staff to Singapore; the FSA’s states that the distribution of overseas single-stock leveraged ETFs whose underlying assets are shares of Japanese companies by Financial Instruments Business Operators is not considered to be in the public interest
  • Digital Assets: Bitbank selects Figment to power crypto staking infrastructure in Japan
  • The Last Word: Undervalued in Burgers, Less Undervalued in iPhones

Venture Capital & Private Markets

  • SMBC Asia Rising Fund and Singtel Innov8 back enterprise AI firm fileAI in drive for regional expansion: Enterprise intelligence startup fileAI has received investments from SMBC Asia Rising Fund and Singtel Innov8 to accelerate its expansion in Japan and scale its enterprise data automation platforms; financial terms of the deal were not disclosed; the funding round will support fileAI as it builds out a local footprint in Japan across engineering, sales, and customer success teams; the expansion builds on the company's June 2026 strategic partnership with JRE Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of JR East Group
  • SBI Holdings secures 20% stake in Indonesia's Ajaib Group to expand digital asset footprint across Asia: SBI Holdings has executed a strategic investment in Ajaib Group, operator of one of Indonesia's largest online investment platforms; through a subsidiary, SBI acquired a 20% stake in Ajaib, converting the Jakarta-based FinTech firm into an equity-method affiliate; Ajaib Group began as an online brokerage and has since expanded into a comprehensive wealth management platform serving millions of retail investors; its offerings cover equities, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, foreign exchange, and digital assets—including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and commodities—alongside banking and payment services; the firm also provides customized liquidity and over-the-counter (OTC) stablecoin settlement services to corporate and institutional clients in Indonesia

Payments

  • Monex subsidiary Coincheck wins Japan’s second EPI license, clearing path for regulated USDC rollout: Coincheck, the core digital asset exchange subsidiary of Monex Group and Nasdaq-listed Coincheck Group N.V., has completed registration as an Electronic Payment Instruments (EPI) Service Provider; the regulatory clearance, issued by the Kanto Local Finance Bureau under registration number 00002, formally positions Coincheck as only the second crypto asset exchange in Japan authorized to intermediate and custody fiat-pegged stablecoins under the domestic regulatory perimeter; the authorization serves as the operational catalyst for Coincheck to initiate full-scale deployment of on-chain finance and stablecoin settlement mechanisms across retail, corporate, and institutional client segments; crucially, the license operationalizes a cross-border alliance established on February 27, 2024, between Coincheck and Circle Internet Financial; under that agreement, both entities committed to expanding domestic access to USD Coin (USDC), an initiative that remained contingent upon Coincheck securing formal EPI registration from Japanese financial authorities
  • Japan’s Financial Services Agency launches 43-company pilot to test interbank tokenized deposit settlements: A group of 43 companies has officially launched full-scale testing for the "Interbank Settlement of Tokenized Deposits" project, supported under the Financial Services Agency’s "FinTech PoC Hub" framework; led by DCP, GMO Aozora Net Bank, and ABeam Consulting, the initiative gathered participating institutions and key stakeholders to evaluate the technical, legal, and operational viability of executing on-chain interbank settlements; the pilot aims to address cross-bank compatibility challenges by testing 24/7/365 Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) models designed to reduce transaction costs and settlement risks
  • So & Sato are asking: "Can AI Agents Spend Money?"; how x402, USDC, and Agentic Wallets Are Enabling Agentic Payments & Issues under Japanese Law

Economics

  • Deputy Governor of the Bank of Japan, Ryozo Himino, spoke at a meeting with local leaders in Saitama on the topic of "Japan's Economy and Monetary Policy"
  • Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management has published "Welcome to Japan's new inflationary era"
  • The NLI Research Institute has updated its"Japan’s Economic Outlook for FY 2026 and FY2027" as of August 2026
  • The Bank of Japan has published its "Annual Review 2026," providing an overview of the Bank of Japan's organization and business operations, a review of its implementation of business operations and organizational management in fiscal 2025 (April 1, 2025 - March 31, 2026), and a description of the Bank's accounts for the fiscal year
  • The Bank of Japan Review has published an issue on "Expanding and Revising the Application of Hedonic Quality Adjustment in the Corporate Goods Price Index"; the Corporate Goods Price Index (CGPI) employs the hedonic method for quality adjustment; this statistical method estimates the relationship between product quality and prices in an objective manner; its strength lies in its ability to accommodate a wide range of quality variations, and it is currently applied to five items, including passenger cars; in conjunction with the process for the rebasing of the CGPI to the 2025 base year, the authors are considering expanding the range of products quality-adjusted using the hedonic method and modifying the hedonic quality adjustment method for certain products
  • The Inter-American Development Bank has published "Building on Fifty Years of Japan-IDB Partnership: Unlocking Complementarities for Economic Growth"; this report was prepared for the Japan-LAC Business Summit, held in Tokyo, Japan, on August 24-25, 2026; since Japan became a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, the partnership has provided a platform for collaboration between Japan and Latin America and the Caribbean; on the fiftieth anniversary of this partnership, this publication examines the evolution of Japan-LAC economic relations, with a focus on trade, investment, firm capabilities, and cooperation, and identifies areas where further cooperation can strengthen complementarities and deepen the relationship in the years ahead

Capital Markets

Digital Assets

  • Bitbank selects Figment to power crypto staking infrastructure in Japan: Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank has partnered with institutional staking provider Figment to power its domestic staking service, allowing Japanese customers to generate yield on exchange-held digital assets without maintaining independent validator infrastructure; bitbank, an ISMS-certified operator registered with local regulators, selected Figment following a due diligence review of its security, compliance, and operational standards; Figment holds Full NORS Certification for Ethereum, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001 certifications, and accounts for approximately 6% of total staked Ethereum globally

The Last Word: Undervalued in Burgers, Less Undervalued in iPhones

Source: Apollo Global Management

Torsten Slok at Apollo Global Management comments on currency valuation imbalances:

"The Big Mac index measures currency valuation by comparing the price of an identical burger across countries. By that measure, the Brazilian real and Egyptian pound look deeply undervalued against the dollar, by 20% to 55%, see charts below.

But swap the burger for an iPhone 17 Pro with 256GB, and the picture inverts. The same phone costs 90% more in Brazil and 55% more in Egypt than it does in the US.

The difference is what goes into each product.

A burger is assembled from local labor, local rent and local beef, none of which can be arbitraged across borders, while an iPhone is a genuinely global good built from one supply chain at one dollar cost.

The bottom line is that the iPhone index is the better read on currency valuation, because the Big Mac's core weakness is the one Balassa and Samuelson identified 60 years ago. Productivity gains in rich countries lift wages economy-wide, including in the kitchen, so poor countries look cheap by construction rather than because their currencies are genuinely undervalued."

Alas, by that measure the JPY/USD relationship is close to parity.

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