Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings has officially announced the launch of its cryptocurrency exchange, VCTRADE.

The launch comes after much delay, which the company said was done to boost security measures. In its press release, SBI said:

“We completed registration of the virtual currency exchange business in September 2017 and have been preparing for the start of business for some time,” adding that the service is currently available only to pre-registered users and expects to fully launch the platform in July 2018.

Initially, the exchange platform offers support for Ripple’s XRP token and plans to subsequently add support for Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

SBI first announced its plans to launch SBI Virtual Currencies Co., Ltd. back in October 2016. The delay in the launch followed the efforts by Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) to increase oversight of domestic cryptocurrency exchanges following the major hack at Coincheck earlier this year.

The company collaborated with Huobi cryptocurrency exchange in late 2017 in its efforts to launch the cryptocurrency exchange. However, SBI dissolved the partnership earlier this year.