Technology company FPT Corporation and financial services firm SBI Holdings Inc have jointly invested $3 million in Vietnamese blockchain startup Utop, local English language daily news outlet Viet Nam News reported on April 19.
FPT Corporation and SBI Holdings Inc have reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to invest $3 million in joint venture Utop, a technology startup based on FPT’s enterprise blockchain platform dubbed akaChain. Utop is designed to gain and redeem loyalty points at merchants within the same network.
The project will purportedly enable small businesses registered on the network to reduce costs and secure data through the akaChain platform. FPT Chairman Truong Gia Binh said that “the development of Industry 4.0 technologies has created breakthrough opportunities for businesses, mushrooming so many innovative business models. We call it digital transformation.”
SBI has previously invested in a number of ventures in the cryptocurrency sector, including its own exchange Vctrade, alongside a series of investments in businesses developing cryptocurrency infrastructure and services.
Last October, SBI and Ripple’s XRP-powered payments app, MoneyTap, went live for account holders at selected Japanese banks. At the time, the app intended to include a consortium of 61 institutions, representing over 80 percent of all of Japan’s banking assets, in its service.
That same month, the development and innovation wing of Vietnam’s largest telecommunications operator Viettel Group, the Viettel Enterprise Solutions Corporation, set a goal to become Vietnam’s leading blockchain technology provider in five years. “Blockchain is an unlimited ecosystem. The most difficult task for Viettel is choosing the most effective blockchain technology that can be applied in daily life,” the company’s deputy general director Ngo Vinh Quy said then.
