Announced today, Japanese banking giant SBI Group has invested in Swiss crypto startup Tangem.

The company is the creator of a slimline hardware cryptocurrency wallet.

SBI Group Invests in Tangem

SBI is offering its support to Tangem with a $15 million USD investment. It will use the capital to expand into areas such as stablecoins, ICOs, tokenized asset offerings, and digital identity.

Tangem Crypto Wallet

Described by the company as a “smart banknote for digital assets,” Tangem’s cryptocurrency wallet mimics a bank card in that it allows a user to make off-chain physical transactions. Effectively, a user can make in-store purchases, by loading the device with cryptos via an NFC-enabled smartphone.

SBI Group

SBI’s wholly-owned subsidiary SBI Crypto Investment provided Tangem with the funding.

The group has been busy partnering with a host of crypto startups. In October 2018, it invested in Denmark-based blockchain security startup Sepior and last March, it bought 40% of cold wallet maker CoolBitX.

SBI and Tangem

On the investment deal SBI Holdings President and CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, said the following:

“The Tangem hardware wallet, which is highly secure and affordable, is an important tool to promote mass adoption of digital assets and blockchain […] We believe utilizing Tangem will help stimulate the demand for other blockchain services provided by SBI.”