BlackRock, SBI and Startale Sign October 26 MOU to Link Tokenized Funds to JPYSC

Tokenized Funds Meet a Yen Stablecoin

BlackRock, SBI Holdings and Startale Group have signed a memorandum of understanding to study whether tokenized money market fund shares can be settled in JPYSC, the yen stablecoin the Japanese partners launched in June. The document, dated October 26, binds four parties: SBI Holdings, Startale Group, BlackRock Financial Management and BlackRock Japan. A money market fund is where companies and institutions park idle cash, and the premise here is that running fund units and the yen token on infrastructure that operates around the clock would let Japanese treasury teams move between yen and yield-bearing funds without waiting for bank business hours. The collaboration doubles as an early test of how far Web3 rails can carry institutional cash management.

JPYSC was built to avoid constraints that limit competing tokens. SBI Shinsei Trust Bank issues it under Japan's trust-type model, which sidesteps the 1 million yen balance and transfer caps that apply to fund-transfer-type tokens such as JPYC, and the token launched with one-to-one segregated reserves, a tokenomics structure closer to a custody account than to a payment voucher. The partners split the work into three streams: technical and infrastructure work on how tokenized fund shares and JPYSC fit together on-chain, business and distribution work on who sells the product to whom, and regulatory and market development work on what Japanese rules permit. No timeline was announced, the memorandum does not commit the parties to a finished product, and the companies said the collaboration remains open to other financial institutions in Japan and abroad.

For BlackRock, the study extends a franchise it already runs at scale. Its tokenized treasury fund BUIDL, launched in 2024, manages roughly $2.17 billion in US Treasuries, repurchase agreements and cash. JPMorgan has likewise pushed tokenized money market products, rolling out its MONY and JLTXX funds on Solana for US investors. SBI chairman Yoshitaka Kitao put the strategic case plainly, saying the shift to on-chain finance has become a global trend that cannot be avoided and that Japan must prepare early rather than fall behind.

SBI's Ripple Ties Sit Outside the MOU

The Ripple connection runs through SBI rather than through the agreement's text. SBI is one of Ripple's longest-standing partners in Asia, and this year the relationship turned into product: in June, SBI VC Trade won approval from Japan's Financial Services Agency under the electronic payment means regime and began distributing Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin. The brokerage, which also serves retail spot trading customers and was the first Japanese operator approved to handle USDC, distributes JPYSC through the same licensed framework. That places SBI between Ripple's dollar token, its own yen token and, potentially, the tokenized funds of the world's largest asset manager.

The memorandum itself never mentions Ripple, RLUSD or XRP, and nothing in the October 26 document links BlackRock's tokenization work to the XRP ecosystem. The timing still lines up with Ripple's separate march into regulated custody: the company received final approval on Monday for a United States national trust bank charter, a step that puts RLUSD reserve management and custody under a federal framework. That charter landed as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency urges regional banks in the United States to examine stablecoin issuance. Insurer Aviva, meanwhile, recently committed $66 million to a tokenized pound fund built on the XRP Ledger. SBI now holds pieces of both tracks, yen settlement through JPYSC, dollar settlement through RLUSD, and fund exposure through the BlackRock study, without any single document yet tying them together.

What the Agreement Leaves Undecided

What the document does not say matters as much as what it does. No schedule was disclosed, no product is guaranteed, and Ripple's rails go unmentioned even though SBI sits on both sides of the yen-dollar settlement pair. The agreement is a feasibility study, and its three workstreams leave the commercial question, which institutions would distribute such a product and under what Japanese permissions, entirely unresolved. Kitao's argument that on-chain finance is now unavoidable gives the partnership a direction, while the absence of dates keeps every concrete outcome open. Both the infrastructure build and the regulatory mapping would need to clear before any tokenized money market fund actually settles in JPYSC, and nothing in the announcement commits the four parties to that step.