SBI Shinsei Bank, the deposit-taking arm of Japan's SBI Group, is launching a three-month trial campaign from June 10 that pays depositors a portion of their interest in cryptocurrency exchange vouchers redeemable for $BTC, $ETH, or $XRP. The vouchers equal 20% of each customer's deposit interest payment, converted at market rates when the customer executes the trade. The mechanism functions less like a yield product and more like a referral funnel into SBI VC Trade, the group's regulated crypto exchange — customers must open an SBI VC Trade account before they can redeem anything.
How the Voucher Program Works
The trial covers fixed-term deposits and savings accounts with maturities of three months to five years. The voucher scale is modest: a 300,000-yen deposit earns roughly 500 yen; a deposit of 30 million yen or more earns approximately 20,000 yen. Customers select which asset — $BTC, $ETH, or $XRP — and conversion executes at the prevailing market rate within a defined redemption window.
SBI Shinsei counts approximately 4.33 million individual deposit accounts. Even low conversion rates into SBI VC Trade accounts represent meaningful user acquisition for the exchange. A February campaign had already offered up to 20,000 yen in $XRP exchange vouchers tied to Power Direct yen time deposits, so the bank is iterating on a tested model. SBI Shinsei says it will collect customer feedback during the trial before deciding on a permanent rollout this fall.
SBI Group's Broader Crypto Stack
The deposit voucher program is one piece of a faster-moving buildout across SBI Group. In March, SBI VC Trade introduced a retail USDC lending service, letting users earn returns on fixed-term stablecoin deposits. In May, SBI VC Trade joined APLUS and Visa Worldwide Japan to launch the SBI Visa Crypto Card, which converts card-spending rewards into $BTC, $ETH, or $XRP and connects to SBI Securities' monthly investment services.
On the investment product side, SBI Securities is co-developing crypto investment trusts for retail investors alongside Rakuten Securities. SBI has also filed for two ETFs on the Tokyo Stock Exchange: a combined $BTC and $XRP product targeting 32 billion dollars in assets within three years, and a "Digital Gold Crypto" ETF structured at 51% gold and 49% digital assets.
At the exchange infrastructure layer, SBI has submitted a letter of intent to acquire a controlling stake in Bitbank, one of Japan's top regulated exchanges, after absorbing Bitpoint Japan into SBI VC Trade. The group has separately partnered with Startale Group to build a blockchain for tokenized stocks and launched JPYSC, a yen-backed stablecoin.
The deposit voucher trial adds a low-friction on-ramp — small enough that most depositors won't register the size, targeted enough to generate SBI VC Trade account openings. That account, once open, positions SBI Group to cross-sell every other product in its expanding digital-asset lineup.