March 3, 2017 SBI Holdings, Inc. (TOKYO: 8473)

SBI Investment Co., Ltd.

Notice Regarding an Investment into Episode Six Limited

SBI Investment Co., Ltd. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Katsuya Kawashima; hereinafter "SBI Investment"), is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, Inc. (Head office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Yoshitaka Kitao), which conducts investments and management of venture capital funds. SBI Investment hereby announces that it has invested in Episode Six Limited (hereinafter "Episode Six") through the FinTech Fund.

Episode Six develops and delivers next generation software platforms to financial services firms, e-commerce companies, and a range of enterprises that issue payment products such as debit card and prepaid card. Equipped with the world's cutting-edge technologies, platforms provided by Episode Six allow the user company to effortlessly design a payment card's features such as its functionality and the details of a customer-loyalty point program according to the company's strategy and the needs of its customers, something enabled through connection with an API*. Such platforms also allow the user to readily make changes to a payment card's features on an online administration portal. This enables even a non-IT department job-owner officer to easily modify and enhance a payments program.

In December 2015, SBI Investment established the FinTech Fund (Fund name: FinTech Business Innovation LPS; total commitment amount: JPY 30 billion), which intends to invest in the FinTech field. The FinTech Fund will make aggressive efforts to invest in promising both Japanese and overseas venture companies in the FinTech business fields and support open innovation between the fund investors and the investee companies, with a view to promote introduction and utilization of FinTech-related technologies by the fund investors, while boosting the value of investee companies.

The SBI Group will continuously expand investments in venture companies in the FinTech field by leveraging the knowledge in the online financial services businesses accumulated by itself, as a FinTech pioneer company, and sequentially adopt the leading-edge FinTech technologies in the Group's Financial Services Business.

[Outline of Episode Six]

Head office

: 9/F Amtel Building, 148 Des Voeux Road Central, Central HK

Representative

: John Mitchell, Co-Founder, CEO

Business

: Develop and deliver software platforms for payment products such as debit

card and prepaid card

Establishment

: July 2015

URL

: https://episodesix.com/

* Application Programming Interface: Mechanism to enable the managing of data and software functions from an outside program source

***************************************************************************************** For further information, please contact:

SBI Holdings, Inc. Corporate Communications Dept., Tel: +81 3 6229-0126

SBI Holdings Inc. published this content on 03 March 2017 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 07 March 2017 08:27:06 UTC.

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