Japanese financial services giant SBI Group has invested $15 million in Swiss startup Tangem, maker of a slimline hardware wallet for cryptocurrencies.
Tangem describes its crypto storage product as a "smart banknote for digital assets." Designed to be used like a bank card, the product allows off-chain physical transactions to be used, for example, for in-store payments, once cryptos have been loaded onto the device via an NFC-enabled smartphone.
The startup announced the SBI investment Monday, saying that it would help it expand its technology to other areas such as stablecoins, initial coin offerings (ICOs), tokenized asset offerings, digital identity and more.