Japan's third-largest credit card issuer Credit Saison launches investment fund targeting real-world asset startups

The venture wing of Japan's financial giant Credit Saison is launching a multi-million-dollar blockchain investment fund called Onigiri Capital, according to an announcement on Monday.

"Onigiri Capital is a $50 million blockchain investment fund positioning itself as the premier institutional-grade bridge between U.S. innovation and Asia’s established blockchain and financial networks for founders to build global financial products," the team wrote in an announcement.

Onigiri, which is backed by Saison's venture unit Saison Capital, has reportedly secured up to $35 million to date via "a combination of Credit Saison and outside investors," a spokesperson told The Block. "The fund has a maximum cap of $50M so they are available to take in additional capital," the spokesperson noted.

The fund will focus on early-stage startups building in the real-world asset space. This includes stablecoin, payments, tokenization, DeFi, and other financial infrastructure efforts, particularly with connections to Asia.

"The center of gravity for real-world asset innovation is shifting, and Asia's role is growing at an exponential rate," Onigiri managing partner and Saison Capital partner Qin En Looi said in a statement. "We saw a critical gap in the U.S. market: an absence of the specialized expertise needed to navigate and succeed in dynamic Asian markets."

Looi noted Onigiri will serve as a “launchpad for U.S. founders and developers” into Asia. The fund can leverage Saison’s “deep roots” across Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, including banking connections, regulatory expertise, and existing distribution channels.

“We’re here to complement existing product investors by offering founders the best of both worlds — Silicon Valley’s innovation combined with Asia’s institutional validation — and provide the expertise needed to originate high-quality solutions that meet institutional, global finance standards,” Hans de Back, Onigiri managing partner, said in the statement.

Credit Saison is a major Japanese financial services company headquartered in Tokyo with affiliations to Mizuho Financial Group. The firm is reportedly one of Japan's third-largest credit card issuers, behind JCB and Visa Japan, and has additional finance, real estate services, and entertainment operations. Its venture wing has been investing in crypto firms since at least 2023 .

Parent company Credit Saison Co., Ltd., trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under the ticker 8253.T. The stock is down slightly at press time to ¥3,913 Japanese yen ($26.55), according to Yahoo Finance . It traded between ¥2,781.00–4,269.00 over the past 52 weeks.

The state of crypto venture funding

Crypto venture funding collapsed during the pandemic-era bear market and has not yet rebounded despite rising token prices. In 2022, for instance, crypto VCs raised a peak of $86 billion across 329 funds. By comparison, so far this year, just $3.7 billion has been raised across 28 funds.

Likewise, the amount of capital actually deployed by venture funds appears to be dropping — from $8.13 billion in January–August 2024 to $8.05 billion during the same period this year, according to The Block Pro’s data .

In a recent edition of The Funding newsletter , The Block’s Yogita Khatri pointed to several factors limiting crypto-focused fundraising. This includes higher interest rates that push allocators toward safer, more liquid assets, as well as skepticism following the high-profile collapse of crypto exchange FTX and doomed stablecoin effort LUNA/UST.

The rise of digital asset treasury companies — public firms that raise capital through public or private offerings to buy tokens — also appears to be eating into the funding that may otherwise be deployed into crypto startups. To take just one example, notable crypto investor Pantera Capital said it had invested over $300 million in so-called DATs as of August.

According to The Block Pro’s data , the majority of VC capital is going towards crypto startups focused on financial services and DeFi in recent months, representing something of a reversal from the bear market, when “infrastructure” plays were favored.